


Metal and Wax

by Miniatures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Angels are Androids, Angst and Porn, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Destiel, Background Dodio, Background Het, Blood and Gore, Chuck is a Woman Named Charlotte, F/F, F/M, Genreblending, M/M, Minor Character Death, Nonbinary Character, Romance, Science Fiction, Temporary Character Death, genderbent character, permanent character death also but minor chars and villains only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-04-23 06:14:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 105,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14326344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miniatures/pseuds/Miniatures
Summary: Humanity is nearly destroyed. What remains are a few isolated communities and Eden, a quarantined haven where humans thrive and androids - nicknamed Angels - serve.Charlotte Shurley, the creator of the androids, has been made immortal by the Grace that powers her robots. Her reclusive habits are broken by the arrival of Hannah, a glitchy android maid who inadvertently draws Charlotte out of her shell and into a conspiracy.Gabriel is an Archangel, a powerful android sent to gather intel on possible dissenters. His current mark is one Sam Winchester, who seems at first to be nothing more than a good lay with a few secrets.But Sam might just have the power to bring both Eden and Gabriel to their knees.





	1. Prologue

The skin was the most difficult. Rendering seeming flesh from nothing was nearly impossible, but Charlotte thought she’d managed to make it work. She cupped Raphael’s face, ran a thumb over its cheek— _his_ cheek, she had to remind herself. The things had to pass. They would have minds, when she was done. She had to get used to thinking of them as more than the hardware from which she’d built them.

She pulled her hand away, rubbed her fingers and thumb together. Not _quite_ there yet. Too smooth. Charlotte wanted pores, the glide-tack of clean skin. Her creations would be beautiful, and they would be perfect, but they had to look real. Feel real.

“Shit,” she muttered, and stepped back. “Shit, more—less—something. Shit.”

Charlotte had been up for nearly two days straight. She was running on caffeine pills and adrenaline. And the androids—angels—were nearly done.

Her eyes passed over them. There were four, a happy family straight out of scripture, named after the first four Biblical angels that Charlotte had managed to remember. Gabriel, Lucifer, Raphael, and Michael.

There would be more. But she had to start somewhere.

Charlotte gnawed a thumbnail as she thought. Pulled her notebook, one of many, off the desk behind her and flipped through it mindlessly. _Something here, gotta fix it, gotta be something here…_

The pages flitted by, blueprints for half-organic, half-artificial beings. Sketches of wings and motherboards, feathers and steel.

Charlotte groaned and tossed the book to the side. Ran calloused hands over her face. There _had_ to be a way. She just couldn’t see it.

Her eyes fell to the notebook, hoping that Fate, Destiny, _Something_ had deigned to have it land open on a page with an answer. No such luck.

With a sigh, she stepped towards the androids. Towards Lucifer, her favourite: it ( _he_ ) had turned out the best so far.

“Help me out here, Luci.” She clapped the thing on the shoulder ( _not right, doesn’t feel right, shit_ ) _._ “Tell me what you need.”

Lucifer didn’t answer. Lucifer didn’t have a voice to answer, because Charlotte had yet to give him one.

The ring of the doorbell was loud as a gong, and Charlotte yelped. Glared up at the ceiling—floor—above her. She knew who it was. It was only ever one person.

“Fucking asshole,” Charlotte mumbled as she climbed the stairs out of her basement. “Cocksucker.”

She opened the door to see the Man in the Suit. Tall, deathly thin and pale, dark eyes sunken and wide. If he had a name, Charlotte didn’t know it. Wasn’t sure it had ever been offered.

“Ms. Shurley,” the Man said, and he sounded bored with the proceedings already. “May I come in?”

Charlotte stepped aside to let her visitor by, suddenly very conscious of the fact that she was wearing a ratty bathrobe and little else.

The Man stopped six feet down the hallway and stood stock-still. Charlotte circled around him and scratched her nose.

“They aren’t done yet,” she said, and dear God, the whine in her voice was pathetic. “I need more time.”

The Man sighed. “That’s not an issue, Ms. Shurley. We can wait. But you mentioned something in your updated proposal that we must discuss.”

“Yeah? What, uh, what was it?”

“This… power source you’ve developed,” the Man met her eye and it was suddenly a struggle for Charlotte to stay upright. “The one you call Grace.”

“What about it?” She was _squeaking_ now, fuck her.

“How did you come by it?”

 _Come by it._ The Man’s voice wrinkled around the phrase, as if he suspected that Charlotte had stumbled across the stuff in a back alley and shoved it down her coat. Charlotte bristled.

“I didn’t _come by_ anything, I invented it.”

“Invented a power source?”

“Well, uh, when you put it like that…”

“How should I put it, Ms. Shurley?”

Charlotte heaved her shoulders. “Dunno. It just…” _Blackout, and a flash. Wake up with formula for alchemical might-be-magic scrawled in the margins of a theoretical physics text._ “It just came to me.”

“I see.” The Man brushed dust from his sleeve. “And you believe this Grace will keep the angels running?”

“I know it will,” Charlotte said.

“Very good.”

The Man turned on his heel and made for the door. All of their meetings went this way—began with a promise of discussion, ended abruptly after less than five minutes. Charlotte didn’t mind getting rid of the Man in the Suit. She just didn’t like being toyed with.

“Oh.” The Man stopped at the door. Turned back around. “I almost forgot.” He produced a cheque from ( _nowhere_ ) his sleeve and placed it in Charlotte’s hand. “For your costs. Never let it be said that Equin’s artists starve under their patronage.”

Charlotte nodded. “Thanks.”

“Ms. Shurley,” the Man added, his voice distant, like it was an afterthought. “These things will change the world, I hope you know. Androids that can think, that look and feel and behave like humans, yet subservient and infinitely more powerful… oh, the things we can do with them, Ms. Shurley. Just imagine.”

“I have,” Charlotte said quietly.

The Man shook his head. “Not enough.”

Then he was gone, and Charlotte was alone.

“Enigmatic motherfucker,” she muttered, and shoved the cheque in her bathrobe’s pocket.

Charlotte descended back into the basement to make flesh for her sleeping angels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. 
> 
> For those who don't know, I started posting this story in March 2015, and took it down unfinished in September 2017 due to my frustration with people's lack of interest. It may have also had something to do with the chronic depression. 
> 
> (Please note: if you're a returning reader who dropped the story at some point, I'm not trying to single you out or blame you for me taking the story down last September. I was going through a bad time all throughout 2015-2017 and my updates were often months apart, so I get it.)
> 
> But 13x17 and x18 have rekindled my desire to work on this fic, and this week and weekend I've found myself happily writing for the first time in ages. I'm currently working on the last three chapters of M&W. I'll be reposting the chapters I've already written once a week to give myself a buffer (excluding this week, because there's Sabriel porn in chapter 1 so I couldn't very well leave you with the prologue, could I?). 
> 
> I'm not going back and reworking the written chapters, so if you notice any inconsistencies or shifts in quality, remember that I wrote this over the course of 2-3 years. Which brings me to the other thing I'm going to be including: Chapter-by-chapter Trivia. 
> 
> For example: the story was conceived after I saw someone (I can't for the life of me remember who) get an anonymous ask on Tumblr suggesting an AU where the SPN angels were all military-grade robots. Inspiration credit goes 100% to that nonny, because I took that and ran with it. This was around 1 AM sometime in December 2014. I stayed up until after 6 AM worldbuilding & writing with GreyMichaela and our mutual friend nahemaraxe. This prologue (and part of the first chapter) was written that morning, though in the original draft Charlotte was an unbent Chuck.


	2. What it Feels Like

_On the lip of a penthouse balcony, a man with golden eyes spreads his arms wide. Spikes come tearing out of his back, the flesh knitting with flashes of blue-white as goldplate unfolds with sharp clicks. Gleams and rustles in the filtered sunlight, feathers made of material so fine they almost pass for real. The soft hum of his bones rushes from his mouth, teeth vibrating in time with the whirr-snick of metal._

_The Archangel Gabriel unfurls his wings._

 

Clocks were inching towards the appointed time on the appointed date, but Gabriel’s mark had yet to arrive. He’d received the debriefing from Naomi at Dispatch just over a week ago—the boy’s profile was encoded in his skull, he could bring it up with a blink. _Sam Winchester, six foot four, twenty-three years old. High Risk, to be kept under strict observation until further notice_. The usual sort.

This was Sam Winchester’s hangout, _The Singing Glass_ —a rumpled little hole in the wall so far removed from the high-gloss eateries of the Central City it seemed far dirtier than it actually was. Typical border town aesthetic, all dim lights and warped wood.

Gabriel was a fan of border towns. The urban centers of Eden were cramped and crowded, overrun with iconography and a muddle of snarled frequencies buzzing through the air like blackflies. But it wasn’t quite chaos—more order wearing chaos like a mantle. Much of the natural population was Under, either by prescription or choice, plastered in placid joy from dose to dose. The rest were too comfortable in the top tier to risk colouring outside the lines. Border towns gave their occupants more breathing room.

Which, admittedly, wasn’t always a good thing.

 _The Singing Glass_ was still running empty in the last few minutes before the evening bells and the start of the dinner rush. But Sam, whose shift as the librarian’s assistant at the local Archive should’ve ended a half hour ago, wasn’t supposed to wait for the bells. He never did, not according to Naomi’s dossier and not according to Gabriel’s week of groundwork. Of course, that didn’t mean much—the sounding schedule was a guideline, not a strict rule, and in the border towns it was hardly even that—but it certainly didn’t help the boy’s case.

So the archangel sat, drumming fingers against sticky laminate and pretending to be human.

The waitress sidled up to his table, a young woman with a blonde pixie cut. “You want the usual?”

It was the same girl who had taken his order every day that week. She was smiling, but it was the strained smile of someone who’d worked a lunch rush and a long afternoon and just wanted to go home. _She’s not Under. Should take her name for a scrip, probably._

“Sure do, sweetheart.” Gabriel winked. The waitress’ smile widened just a fraction as she took his menu. “Say, you feeling okay?”

“Of course I am,” she said, so automatic Gabriel would’ve known it for a lie even if he hadn’t already guessed. “I mean… long day, y’know?”

“Oh, yeah. Just might wanna keep it under wraps. Anybody sniffing around, you might wind up with a scrip in your mailbox.” He arched a brow, and her eyes flickered dark a moment.

“Right,” she said, voice stiff through her teeth, though her smile remained.

She left, and Gabriel resumed his drumming. Who bothered learning their waitresses’ names anyway?

He’d been setting up his pretext for the approach, eyeing Sam over a burger and a slice of _The Singing Glass_ ’ signature chocolate cake every day for the past week. He was shacking up in one of the town’s undercover homes, but with luck he wouldn’t need to stay there much longer. Today was the day he made his move.

He waited through the first bell at six o’clock and dreaded the possibility of having to extend his early dinner for another goddamn hour. Worse, waiting until tomorrow. But he needn’t have worried—not ten minutes after the first bell Sam Winchester slipped through the door, and Gabriel perked. _Fina-fucking-lly_.

Sam’s eyes ( _green_ , said the dossier. Gabriel’s addendum: _hazel_ ) drifted towards the archangel, who was smiling at him. Sam returned it halfheartedly, the expression so grim and so tight Gabriel’s was startled into faltering.

Gabriel chanced a waggle of his fingers, and that got Sam to brighten some. Slightly. Infinitesimally.

_Damn. And I wanna get him to take me home._

Sam slid into his usual booth, right in Gabriel’s line of sight. The waitress approached him, took his order—same thing every time, tuna melt on white, side salad, bottle of beer. Longfeather Brewery, purveyor of the shittiest swill two shekels could buy. The Winchester poison of choice.

The waitress dipped her head towards Sam, speaking to him in low tones. Gabriel, one of the only other people in there, was not meant to hear her. And if he hadn’t been an archangel, he wouldn’t have.

_“Newbie might be tarred, keep an eye out.”_

Tarred—an artificialist, an Equin devotee from the top tiers. The slur was common enough in border towns, where angelic influence was minimal and the naturals preferred to keep it that way. And of course the caution was to be expected from a High Risk mark and his friends. Still, if Sam believed he was tarred, the entire operation was blown. Gabriel had to switch gears.

He studied Sam over the booth, the curve of his mouth, the shaggy cut of his brown hair, the boyish hunch of his shoulders. The way his tongue slipped out between his lips to wet them. The way he kept his eyes infuriatingly trained on his hands.

_Fuck it._

Gabriel picked up his things and slipped into Sam’s booth. Sam blinked up at him, expression caught somewhere between annoyance and curiosity.

“Can I help you?” He sounded resigned to the encounter, and Gabriel tried not to take it personally.

“Yeah, I think so. See, I’ve been eating alone every night this week, I don’t know if you’ve noticed—”

“Oh, I’ve noticed.”

“And you didn’t _say_ anything?” Gabriel put a hand to his chest. “How you wound me.”

Sam breathed a laugh. “I don’t know you, do I? Can’t be too careful.”

“That you can’t.” _And oh, Sammy-boy, you weren’t_. “So. I’ve been alone all week, you’ve been alone all week, and this place isn’t exactly crowded… I figured I’d rather talk to the cute guy than keep making eyes over a cheeseburger. How’s that sound to you?”

Sam’s mouth spread slow into a half-smile, bright and curious. “Sounds like a plan.”

The waitress brought over Sam’s beer. She dropped Gabriel’s drink order, a tall glass of soda, in front of him with a wink.

“Food’ll be right up, boys,” she said, and flounced off back to the kitchen.

Gabriel took a long sip of his soda, smacked his lips. He didn’t need to eat or drink save to keep up appearances, but many years of playing human for Raphael had given him a taste for sweets.

“Well,” he said, letting his pinky finger trace the rim of his glass, “we should probably know each other’s names. I’m Pratt. Gabe Pratt.”

“Sam Winchester,” the kid said immediately, and Gabriel almost hated how easy this was. High Risk his shiny golden ass.

“So, Sam Winchester.” The name was sibilant and smooth on his tongue. It was the first time he’d said it out loud, he realized. “You’re not feeling too hot tonight, are ya?”

“Oh, hey,” Sam said, expression faltering. “You don’t have to—”

“No, c’mon, kiddo, you came in here looking like someone just smothered your puppy.” He leveled a knowing look at Sam. “I’m not interested in taking advantage of hot, weepy messes. So let’s play therapist for five minutes, and then we can shove the emotional baggage in the closet for the night. Okay?”

Sam rubbed his nose. His eyes flickered over Gabriel’s face, brow furrowed slightly like he was deep in thought. “Okay,” he said. Took a long breath, then, without breaking eye contact with Gabriel: “It’s… the anniversary of my brother’s death.”

Gabriel blinked. Sam’s profile bloomed in his mind’s eye, and yes, there it was, under Relations— _Dean Winchester. Missing since June 12 th, 112 AF. Status: Presumed Runaway [PRA]. No further information available_.

Shit. June 12th, 112 AF—the date of the last Breach. A couple of demons had gotten through border security and managed to kill five people before being put down. Gabriel remembered well, and he remembered the fit the Equin chairs had pitched when it got back to them that the Breach had been caused by a patrol angel abandoning their post. Said angel had never been found. Neither, apparently, had Dean Winchester. Either Dean had had something to do with the Breach, or he was just another anti-artificialist defector capitalizing on the chaos. Either way, he was as good as dead to Sam, and to Eden.

But that information had never gone public. Gabe Pratt couldn’t be privy to it. So Gabriel cocked his head and made a sympathetic noise, reaching out to put a hand on Sam’s. “I’m sorry.”

Sam’s mouth quirked, and he shrugged, his gaze dropping to their hands. “S’okay. It’s been… shit, it’s been three years now. Just,” he met Gabriel’s eye again and gave a strained smile, “not my favourite day.”

“‘Course not.” Gabriel cleared his throat, letting his thumb drag over Sam’s wrist. He cocked an eyebrow. “Heh, don’t suppose the old ‘he would’ve wanted you to live a full life’ line would work on you right now?”

Sam laughed quietly. “Uh, no. Not a chance.”

“How about ‘life is short’, that’s a good one.”

“Or,” Sam turned his hand under Gabriel’s so it lay palm-up on the laminate, his fingertips brushing against the archangel’s wrist. “ _Or_ , how about we do what we said we would and shove the emotional baggage in the closet? I was having a bad day, yeah, but now I’m starting to think I might be able to turn it around.” He smiled wide, all teeth and dimples.

“Okay,” Gabriel said with a creeping grin of his own. “Lead the way, then.”

Their food came and slowly, slowly went over the course of the evening—they picked at their respective meals during lulls in conversation, and if Gabriel’s burger was a little cold by the time he swallowed the last bite, he couldn’t be bothered to care. Sam was charming; intelligent and quietly exuberant in the way many introverted humans were. Gabriel added everything to the dossier, every tic, every speech pattern, every irrelevant detail that might help him create a fuller picture of his mark. Sam Winchester liked fruit in his desserts—he read any book he could get his hands on—he’d probably had sex with that Brady guy he kept mentioning—his favourite colour was blue.

“You know that sort of pale, greyish blue that the sky turns when it’s gonna rain?” he said. “That’s the one.”

Stored and filed away.

Gabriel tossed Sam scraps of his alias’ background (a collage of lies and half-truths), just enough to make sure that the conversation never felt too one-sided. Gabe Pratt came from a line of top tier doctors with strong ties to Equin, but had recently left his family.

“I got away with a pretty big settlement in the divorce.” He shrugged. “By which I mean my mom wrote me a cheque. So I’m good on that front. I just… couldn’t do it anymore, y’know? All those ‘bot slaves running around, and we _glorify_ the way that fucking company controls our lives. Did you know _all four_ Equin chairs have seats in the Senate?”

Sam’s brow furrowed. “I… I thought they just had the one. Plus the eight district Senators…”

Gabriel barked a laugh. “So did I. It isn’t exactly public knowledge. But nope—there’s twelve of those dicks total, and most of them are either Equin or in bed with ‘em. No wonder nothing ever fucking changes, huh?”

Sam bowed his head an inch, gave it a firm shake as if a simple _no_ might just change the world’s mind. Gabriel had to admit, the fact that the kid still had it in him to be shocked by injustice was kind of endearing.

He hadn’t expected to glean a lot of relevant intel from a first date—and aside from confirming that Sam was, in fact, not a fan of Equin or their angels, he didn’t. But Sam smiled most of the way through the evening. He seemed pleased by Gabriel’s company, engaged by his conversation. His fingers kept wandering, brushing over Gabriel’s knuckles, wrist, forearm. All featherlight and soft, and the sensors spiderwebbing in Gabriel’s skin were as nerves, sparking under Sam’s fingertips. Register pleasure, catalogue the microdistinctions between Sam’s touch and others’, _this is what it feels like when Sam Winchester touches you_.

So no intel, but input aplenty. Naomi and Raphael would be pleased, he suspected. Gabriel had muted his receiver when he went undercover (he was one of the few career plants trusted enough to be allowed to do so, as dealing with naturals was too messy and unpredictable for Raphael’s taste), so he wouldn’t know for certain until the mission was complete.

Sam laughed at something Gabriel had said, his second bottle of Longfeather sitting warm and sour on the gust of his breath. Gabriel sort of liked it—or maybe he just liked the way Sam looked when he laughed. Damn, but the boy was pretty.

“It’s getting kinda late,” Sam said abruptly, glancing at the digital panel on the wall. “Should probably… think about heading out.”

He gave Gabriel a look, and the unspoken question there was clear. Gabriel swallowed his smug burst of triumph.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked, signaling to the waitress that they were ready to pay. “I’m pretty sure we’re headed the same way.”

“Uh, which way’re you going?”

“Whichever you are.” Gabriel winked.

Sam’s mouth twitched a moment as the waitress approached them, then bloomed into a grin. “I’ll buy that.”

“Then—thanks, ma’am—I’ll buy _this._ ” Gabriel gestured to their empty dishes, and Sam’s eyes widened.

“No, I can’t accept—”

Gabriel, who had already given the waitress his card to scan, waved him off. “Think nothing of it, kiddo. No matter what happens from here on out—thanks so much, sweetheart—you gave me a great dinner, so the least I can do is treat you to it.”

He stood, lifting a brow at Sam. The young man wrinkled his nose, his tongue darting out to peek briefly through his lips.

“Okay,” he said finally, getting to his feet—and _wow,_ did he tower over Gabriel. “Thank you. I—uh, thank you.”

“Seriously,” Gabriel chuckled. The pair of them headed out the door. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing, it was real good of you.” Sam shrugged as they walked. “Probably saved me having to skip lunch tomorrow.”

Gabriel frowned. “You eat out every damn night even though you can’t afford _lunch_?”

“Cheaper than groceries.”

The archangel’s frown deepened, and he resolved to make his next encounter with Sam under the pretext of stopping by with some damn food. The mission was shot if his mark starved himself to death.

Sam, meanwhile, was smiling at him. Slight and more than a little smug. “You paying for dinner also made this a date, technically. This is me, by the way.”

They’d stopped at a tall, narrow brick building still within sight of _The Singing Glass_ , its door painted a peeling, faded violet. Gabriel turned to face Sam, gave a slow nod.

“A date, huh? Then I guess now that I’ve walked you home, it’s time for me to awkwardly shuffle around on your stoop until you send me on my way?”

“That, or you could come in?” Sam’s voice curled up at the end of the sentence, and his mouth curled with it, and he looked so goddamn nervous and hopeful that Gabriel was tempted to call the whole thing off right then.

Instead, he waggled his eyebrows.

“I could do that,” he said, and took a step towards Sam. The boy radiated heat, and it felt good. “I could come in and I could show you what exactly I’m willing to _do_ on first dates.”

Sam ran a light hand up Gabriel’s arm, and the archangel fought the urge to lean into the touch. “Sounds like a good idea to me,” he murmured.

Gabriel moved a little closer. “You sure you’re up for it?”

Sam grinned. “You’re tiny. I think I can handle you.”

“Oh, Sam, Sam, Sammy. I’m gonna remind you that you said that later, see how you feel then.”

“Mm,” was all Sam said. Then he brought his mouth down on Gabriel’s and suddenly neither of them was eager to say anything at all.

Gabriel was aware, peripherally, of Sam fumbling with his key, getting them into the building and slamming the door shut as he shoved the archangel up against it. He was aware but far more conscious of the way Sam was leaning into him, heat and give and muscle, lips and tongue and teeth. Sam’s hands were roaming, eager and warm. The archangel was clinging to his shoulders, and Sam was pressing a leg in between Gabriel’s to lift him, and Gabriel was half-wrapped around the young man’s body, rutting against his thigh.

Sensors fire, register pleasure, _this is what it feels like when Sam Winchester kisses you._

Sam broke the kiss then, mouthing his way across Gabriel’s cheek until he was biting down on his earlobe. Gabriel arched his back with a sharp gasp. Having been designed to withstand incredible amounts of pain, small stings like bites twigged as pure pleasure, and oh, Gabriel wanted _more._

He dug his fingers into Sam’s shoulders, moaning as Sam pulled bruises from the skin of his throat—thank God for pressure-triggered, genetically modified chromatophores. Then there were long fingers fiddling with the button on his jeans, and a wide hand palming his (silicon-based, wired to react to pleasurable stimuli) cock. Panic stirred even as the sensors in his groin began sparking like a fireworks show, and he reluctantly relaxed his grip on Sam.

“Bedroom,” Gabriel choked out. “Wanna… do this someplace comfortable.”

Sam detached himself from Gabriel’s neck and nodded, breath ragged and mouth red. “Okay, okay, hold on.”

They disentangled themselves, and Gabriel realized they stood in a small antechamber, whitewashed and dingy. They were flanked by two doors—one with a “B” painted on it and the other bare. Sam unlocked the “B”, which opened onto a narrow staircase. He led Gabriel up until they found themselves in a cramped suite, all corners and yellowing paint and creaky floorboards. Sam tugged on Gabriel’s hand, grinning, pulling him past a couple of doorways (catalogue: _kitchen, living room, three-piece_ ) and up a second short flight of stairs. They were tumbling through Sam’s bedroom door a half-beat later—Sam was all hands and mouth as he led Gabriel towards the bed, and they collapsed on the mattress in a panting heap.

Gabriel rolled so that he was on top of Sam, straddling his thighs. Pressed light, sloppy kisses along the line of his jaw, the soft, stubbled skin of his throat. He wanted more than anything to be the one pinned again, but that wasn’t in the cards, and in lieu of that he wanted to make Sam _melt._

“Wanna taste you,” he murmured, grinding down against the erection tenting Sam’s pants.

“God—” Sam’s head fell back on a moan. One hand tangled in Gabriel’s hair, the other in the sheets.

Gabriel grinned. “Not quite.”

He reached between them and thumbed Sam’s jeans open, pulling his cock out of his boxers. Gave it a slow, light stroke, relished in the way Sam’s eyes fluttered closed at the touch. “Fucking gorgeous,” he said. “You’re _gorgeous_ , Sammy.”

Sam laughed. Gabriel slid down his body, off the end of the bed to crouch between his legs.

“Don’t laugh.” He pulled off Sam’s shoes and socks. Started tugging on Sam’s pants, and the young man sat up briefly to help him. “I’m serious, kiddo, I’m surprised nobody’s come out to tell me to stop humping the masterpieces.”

“Thanks,” Sam chuckled. He was naked from the waist down now, and quirked an eyebrow at Gabriel. “So, you gonna do something down there, or— _oh._ ”

Sam’s cock was heavy and hot on Gabriel’s tongue. Gabriel winked at him, and Sam groaned, falling back against the mattress with both hands fisted in his own hair.

The archangel hummed around his mouthful, swirled his tongue around Sam’s length and began to bob his head.

“Fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuck,” Sam babbled as Gabriel worked him. “ _Fuck_ , Gabe!”

After a minute, Gabriel pulled off just enough to suck the head of Sam’s cock, lapping at the steady leak of precome before removing his mouth entirely.

“Lube?” he asked.

Sam nodded wildly and gestured to the left side of the bed. “Nightstand drawer. Should… should be the first thing you see. _Hurry._ ”

Sure enough, sitting on top of a haphazard heap of papers in Sam’s drawer was a bottle of lube and a box of condoms. Gabriel grabbed the bottle—the condoms, he decided, would be best suited for another day—and returned to his position between Sam’s legs. Put a hand on each knee and spread them apart slowly, watching with glee as Sam broke out in an anticipatory grin.

Gabriel squeezed some lube onto two of his fingers, using the other hand to take his own cock out. It was fully hard, bluish with Grace and warm with the threads of electric pleasure coursing through his skin. He gave it a light squeeze before slathering that palm in more lube and leaning over to press kisses along the inside of Sam’s thighs.

“Gonna take you apart… piece… by… piece,” he purred, and slipped one slick finger inside Sam.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Sam whimpered. Gabriel smiled and gripped Sam’s cock with his free hand, stroking slow as he moved his finger in and out. “Oh _God,_ Gabe, you’re gonna kill me.”

“Hopefully not quite yet.”

Gabriel slid his second coated finger inside, loving the way Sam clenched so hot and tight around him. Sam’s mouth contracted around an endless, formless groan, jerking his hips like he didn’t know whether to buck up into Gabriel’s fist or fuck back on his fingers and was settling for simply _moving._ He was so beautiful, falling apart under Gabriel’s hands, and Gabriel’s world narrowed to silk and glide and flesh, to the heat gathering in his groin and the lightning skittering up his back.

“Gonna… Gabe, m’gonna…”

“Just let it go, baby,” Gabriel crooned, “I got you, Sam, I got you…”

He crooked his fingers up to press against Sam’s prostate, and then Sam was arching off the bed, coming in thick white stripes on a strangled shout. Gabriel gentled him through with one hand, drawing his fingers out to grip his own cock with the other. After a few strokes he followed Sam, his entire body flaring as the punch and release of orgasm rocketed through him.

There was, of course, no physical evidence of his release. No mess on the floor to match the mess on Sam’s belly and Gabriel’s hand. The archangels could come, but they came clean, which meant that Gabriel would have to make a point of never letting Sam see his cock when he climaxed. Which, as he knew from experience, was possible but became increasingly difficult over time.

So he gave himself a minute, reveling in post-coital looseness before shuffling over to Sam’s nightstand and grabbing the box of tissue sitting on top. Made a show of “cleaning” himself and the floor where he’d crouched.

“You didn’t…” Sam panted, “you didn’t see the condoms?”

“No, I saw them.”

“Oh. When you said lube, I thought you were… going for… y’know.” He gestured vaguely.

Gabriel smirked. “Full on dick-in-ass? Figured I could build up to that.” He paused. “If that’s not too presumptuous.”

Sam shook his head, smiling. “No, I don’t think so.”

Gabriel crawled onto the bed and knelt next to Sam, cleaning the come off of him and dropping the used tissues on the floor. Screw it; they could pick them up later. Sam just lay there, sprawled and slack and still smiling vaguely at Gabriel. When he was clean, he tugged at Gabriel’s hand until the archangel got the hint and settled in next to him.

Sam wrapped his arms around Gabriel, burying his nose in his hair and breathing deep.

“Do I smell okay?” Gabriel asked, smiling against Sam’s collarbone.

“You stink like sex.”

“So I smell fantastic, is what you’re saying.”

Sam laughed, and Gabriel had the foresight to record it that time. It was a good sound, solid and deep, and he wanted to keep it safe. He ran a hand along Sam’s bare forearm, light and ghosting.

“Thank you,” Sam murmured, and sighed contentedly. “Really did turn my day around.”

“Still early, y’know. We could… do something else.”

“Mm.” Sam squirmed and hooked one leg around Gabriel’s, pulling him closer. “Maybe later. S’good for now. S’all I want.”

Gabriel’s smile widened, and he closed his eyes. The mission was going well. He was warm and lax and happy, and cuddling with a pretty boy. Sam pressed a kiss to the top of his head, and Gabriel sent a silent thank you to his creator for giving him the ability to enjoy it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have sum fuk. 
> 
> Fun fact about this chapter: The concepts of the bells and being Under are nahemaraxe's. You'll see in later chapters that I don't run with it as much as I could have, which I think is a shame, because they're awesome dystopian concepts. But they didn't wind up working too much with the story I wound up telling, so they faded into the background somewhat.


	3. The Artifex

Charlotte rolled her eyes. _Thanks, Gabriel, but I_ really _don’t need a newsflash every time you get laid._

Typically, she could tune out the chatter of the angels, shuffle off their frequencies to the back of her mind. The voices of the archangels, however, were near impossible for her to block. Michael and Lucifer had gone quiet after the Fall ( _blast, so loud, so loud and then silence_ ), but Raphael and Gabriel remained constant presences.

Whiny, entitled, _obnoxious_ fucking presences.

Yes, Raphael, Charlotte understood that being in charge of the angelic bureaucrats was a tall order. Yes, Gabriel, she understood what it meant to be a bored and listless wreck in a world that allowed no freedoms for you. What did they expect her to do about it? As Equin’s prized possession (patronized artist, on the cheques), her worth was only equal to her willingness to give them what they wanted. Any attempts at world order overhaul would most definitely fall under “uncooperative”. She’d once considered the merits of going out on one big _fuck you_ , an angelic mass-suicide—which she _could_ engineer if she really wanted, thank you very much—but balked when she realized she would have to go with them. Unless she wanted the Equin chairs on her ass, which would probably prove a much more painful way to go.

“Another glass, Artifex?”

Charlotte gave a jolt, blinked. An angel stood over her, wide-eyed and clad in crisp whites. The bronze-plate ID bracer around their neck gave their name as _Hannah_. They were a Nu Model Servile, built after the Fall—fundamentally sexless but with a feminine design (made people more comfortable, apparently), bald to better display their brace and the crescent-shaped Halo embedded near the base of their skull.

Of course. Charlotte refused to keep a Personal, but the chairs insisted on sending Serviles to her floor. Probably to keep her from throwing herself off the balcony.

Hannah was holding a wine carafe, and Charlotte stared at it a moment. Her eye twitched, and she nodded, holding up the glass she’d forgotten she had in her hand. “Sure.”

“Very good, Artifex,” Hannah said, and began to pour.

Charlotte’s eye twitched again, and she leveled an accusing finger at the angel with her free hand. “Okay, you’re new. What happened to whatsherface?”

“I am sorry, but I do not know of whom you speak, Artifex.”

“Don’t call me that.”

The angel cocked their head as they lifted the carafe. “That _is_ your official title, is it not?”

“Well, uh, yes, but—just call me Charlotte, okay?”

“Are you certain you would not prefer to be called Ms. Shurley? It is more respectful.”

“Yeah, I know, but I, uh…” Charlotte sighed. “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Hannah nodded and set the carafe on the antique end table next to Charlotte’s armchair. She sat in the main living room of her penthouse floor in Equin’s tower. Surrounded by crystal, pale marble, dark hardwood, and walls of treated glass currently tinted to look like solid plaster decorated with abstract murals. It was easy, when she allowed her mind to wander or when the angel chatter overwhelmed her, to forget where she was. It was easy, and it happened far too often.

“Do you require any additional assistance at this time, Ms. Shurley?”

And there, even _that_ was hard to listen to. Like an echo, once in real time and once in Charlotte’s head, a half-beat off because fuck her sanity, that’s why. Luckily, that only seemed to happen with immature Serviles—Equin had demanded that the Nu angels be limited in their capacities, or at least the Servile and grunt Military models. More often than not, the frequencies they projected on Angel Radio (as Charlotte had dubbed the hive mind of which she was the oh-so gracious host) were identical to the words that came out of their mouths. At least until they learned to differentiate between the two. Until then, there was the reverb.

“Hael,” Charlotte said abruptly. “They were the Servile assigned up here last, what happened to them?”

“Oh.” Hannah’s face creased in that minute, constipated way immature angels’ often did when they experienced an emotion. “I am not sure, Ms. Shurley. I have not encountered any angels named Hael. If you would prefer the assistance of your previous Servile, I can—”

“Nonono, it’s okay. You’re… okay. Just…” Charlotte shrugged. “If you get a chance to ask where they wound up, could you?”

“Of course, Ms. Shurley. Do you require any additional—”

“No additional assistance required, H—uh, Hannah.” Charlotte had to double-check the brace. Wow, was she slipping. She lifted her glass and swirled the wine, offering the stone-faced angel a shaky smile. “I’m good. I am _goo-ood_. You can go.”

Hannah nodded and turned. They had almost made it to the door before Charlotte launched herself out of the chair, ignoring the sloshing wine in favour of the sudden headrush that sent her stumbling forward. “Uh, wait.”

The angel was by her side again in an instant, steadying her and taking the glass from her hand. “Am I to understand that you are not, in fact, _goo-ood_?” they asked. If it weren’t for the clumsy way the elongated word fell off their tongue, Charlotte might’ve thought Hannah was being sarcastic.

“No, I’m not,” Charlotte said, shaking her still hollow-feeling head. “Hannah, can—wait.” She staggered out of Hannah’s grasp, and the angel blinked at her. Once she was certain she was steady, Charlotte gestured towards the armchair. “Would you? Sit down, I mean. You can sit down.”

“Ms. Shurley, I do not understand. I do not require rest at the moment.”

“I-i-it’s okay, just—just sit, okay?” Charlotte waved her arms, feeling a familiar curl of distress wind through her gut. “I got something to say, and then you can go, and I think I can get it out in one go if you’re sitting. It’s—it’s stressful to talk when you’re standing next to me, y’know? You don’t know…” She rubbed her nose. God, was she sweating? She was _sweating._

Hannah sat, slowly. They had that constipated look again, and their stare felt too much like having an audience. Charlotte began pacing, short laps in front of the armchair. Tucked her hands behind her back knowing full well they’d be flailing free again in a moment.

“So it’s like this,” she said. “I’m… Equin’s, ‘Artifex Deus’, right? I’m the one who designed you guys, the one who knows how to make the Grace happen. You know that much.”

Hannah nodded. “You are our Creator.”

“Ri—well, okay, that’s the thing, that’s the thing I don’t want.” Charlotte stopped and pointed at the angel with both hands. “I’ve got angels thinking of me like I’m God. I know; I can _hear_ all of you. You fucking _pray_ to me, ask me for help and advice and shit. It’s crazy.”

“Are we not supposed to do that?”

“Well, there’s no rule. And it wouldn’t really stop me from hearing the regular frequencies. But it’s loud and annoying so… no. I say no.” Charlotte shook her head slightly and resumed pacing. “Anyway. I’m your… whatever. Mom. I’m your mom. But I’m not exactly at the top of the totem pole. The Equin chairs—you haven’t met them, have you?”

Hannah shook their head.

“Good. Don’t. They’re fucking nuts. _And_ they haven’t aged since I met them, which… well, let’s just say they should be dust in the ground by now. I mean, at least I have the whole overexposed-to-magical-superjuice excuse. They’re just… eldritch abominations of some kind. Am I rambling?”

“A little bit, Ms. Shurley. May I ask—?”

“Nonono, I gotta get this out.” Charlotte stopped, took a deep breath. “Please. Nobody ever _listens_ , Hannah. I just sit here, and I-I-I produce that blue bullshit, and I have to listen to those voices, blah-blah-blah all day and all night and—I didn’t _want_ this, Hannah! I _made_ this world what it is, you understand?” She stepped towards the chair and loomed over the angel, bracing herself on the cushioned arms. “I made it _all_ , and I _fucked it all up_.”

Hannah said nothing. Hannah didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. Finally Charlotte withdrew, crumpling into herself and sitting on the floor with her knees tucked under her chin. She hugged her legs, closed her eyes, and groaned. “God, I’m a fucking mess.”

Quiet—or as quiet as it ever was—and then Hannah’s voice: “Charlotte. What exactly is it you require of me?”

Charlotte’s head snapped up at the sound of her name. “Find Hael,” she said, before she had room to think. “Take as much time as you need, lemme know when you have something. And… this. I need this.”

“By _this_ I assume you mean a repetition of this particular paradigm? You speak, and I listen?”

“Yes.” Charlotte nodded. “Yes, please, exactly, yes.”

Hannah cocked their head. “I beg your pardon, Charlotte, but how will I know when _this_ is concluded?”

Charlotte laughed, and it was a high, reedy thing. “I’ll tell you. Like right now.” She stretched her legs and tottered to her feet. “I think we’re done for now.”

The angel followed her, standing and offering a strained quirk of their nose, some semblance of a friendly expression. “I am honoured to be serving you, Charlotte.”

Charlotte clapped a hand on Hannah’s shoulder and smiled. She opened her mouth, but realized she had nothing to say. In lieu of words, she pulled Hannah into a tight hug that the angel didn’t even slightly return.

“Come back,” she said. “Don’t tell anybody what I said, and _come back._ ”

 

Dealing with Hannah had been exhilarating—exhilarating by Charlotte’s standards, at least—and now she was growing more than a little stir-crazy stuck in the penthouse. Most nights when she felt like this she summoned Gabriel. But he was busy fucking marks undercover (she’d called him the James Bond of career plants once, a joke which had fallen miserably flat. Understandably so, since she was one of only seven living individuals old and culture-savvy enough to remember James Bond. Also because she’d told the joke to Raphael, who hadn’t laughed and thus was clearly dead inside), and she knew she wouldn’t be able to reach him.

She paced the penthouse for an hour or two, fiddling with every little piece of Equin-purchased décor that hung around her until she reached the calling-bowl by the door. An unfurling lotus standing upright on a lily pad and stem all made of crystal, full of slips of cardstock with the names, contact information, and calling times of several of Eden’s elite. Equin liked to arrange private meetings between Charlotte and the crème de la crème in addition to her standard public appearances. God’s Artisan had to stay in good favour with the rest of Eden’s inner circle, after all. They left their calling cards as standing invitations for the Artifex to grace (ha) them with her presence again at her earliest convenience. She almost never did.

Still, that was always an option. Pick a name out of the bowl and go have tea in some over-fragrant salon. Schmooze the Servus Dei—doctors, scientists, scholars, celebrated artists, Equin’s high profile employees, and their idle wealthy families.

Charlotte plucked a card out of the pile. _Linda Tran, Servus Dei Scholar of Human History_. Right, Charlotte remembered her. Linda Tran and her son Kevin were legends in the Archivist community; their knowledge of ancient texts was nothing short of encyclopedic. Linda hadn’t been the same since _the incident_ —since Kevin was kidnapped and killed by anti-artificial terrorists looking for information on Equin. Charlotte dropped the card back into the bowl. She didn’t trust herself not to put a foot in her mouth if she spent more than five minutes with Linda Tran.

She fished around a few minutes longer, picking up and discarding cards until a single, sharp voice cracked its way to the forefront of the chatter in her head.

CHARLOTTE, I HAVE INFORMATION ON THE SERVILE HAEL, IF IT PLEASES YOU TO HEAR IT NOW.

Charlotte flinched. After the ring of the direct voice subsided, she recognized the frequency as Hannah’s and perked.

_Oh yeah? What’d you hear?_

HAEL WAS PURCHASED FOR PRIVATE OWNERSHIP BY ONE OF EQUIN’S EMPLOYEES—AMELIA NOVAK. MRS. NOVAK WAS IN NEED OF A NEW HOUSEKEEPER, AND AS SHE HAD DEVELOPED A RAPPORT WITH HAEL, SHE BELIEVED THEY WOULD SUIT THE POSITION.

_Oh! Well, that’s good. For a minute there I thought they might’ve gotten ground up for spare parts—uh, not that that happens. Often. You’re good._

I AM A LEADING EDGE, LOYAL, AND EFFICIENT SERVILE. I HAVE NO FEAR OF BEING GROUND UP FOR SPARE PARTS.

 _Well look at you, all confident._ Charlotte made a small triumphant noise as she located the calling card belonging to Amelia Novak— _Servus Dei Designer for Equin_. According to her timestamps, she was available to take calls the following afternoon. _Thanks, Hannah. I might drop in and pay Hael a visit, wanna come?_

I AM CONFUSED. MY UNDERSTANDING IS THAT AMELIA NOVAK IS AN UPSTANDING EQUIN EMPLOYEE—HAEL IS IN GOOD HANDS.

Charlotte shrugged, though she wasn’t sure for whose benefit she did it. _Sure, yeah, Amelia’s cool. I just wanna say hi, though, y’know? I like Hael, and now they’re gone. Won’t see them anymore unless I visit Novak._

BUT YOU HAVE ACCESS TO MANY OTHER SERVILES, INCLUDING MYSELF. Hannah sounded almost petulant. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOUR—

_You don’t have to understand, Hannah, it’s a human thing. Attachments, real messy, don’t have to make sense. Do you wanna come or not?_

There was a pause, and for a moment Charlotte thought Hannah had abandoned the conversation. Then—I WOULD BE HONOURED.

Charlotte smiled as she told Hannah when to meet her back at the penthouse. It wasn’t much, it _really_ wasn’t much, but the fact that she’d have a little more company was reassuring. This would be an adventure—ridiculously minor, but more than enough for an all-but shut-in and an immature ‘bot.

 

Amelia Novak lived in a bone-white stucco villa surrounded by manicured shrubbery, one of many gated havens on the outskirts of the urban sprawl. Getting there was fairly easy—one of the perks to being Artifex Deus was that all it took for Charlotte to receive basic necessities, transportation, and entertainment was a snap of her fingers. A towncar pulled up in front of the Equin Tower and took her and Hannah (whom Charlotte had to sign out to take off the property, much to her embarrassment) straight to the Novak estate, the driving Servile promising to return when Charlotte called.

The door was a large, cream affair with elaborate wrought-iron curlicue accents. It was opened by a Servile who was decidedly _not_ Hael—tall and angular where Hael was small and rounded, with a straight blonde bob of a haircut. Charlotte blinked. The hair, she could tell at a glance, was not a wig. Either Amelia had gone through the trouble of giving her housekeeper hairplug mods, or this was a Pre-Fall Model Servile—complete with organic features like hair and real keratin nails, a more complex nervous and cognitive system, and a much more developed EQ. This angel had been designed in the same way the archangels were—in the same way all angels were before Equin discontinued their kind to make way for the more compliant Nu Models.

The angel’s brace IDed them as _Mariah_. And if Mariah was indeed a Pre-Fall Model, then Mariah was most likely a biological—well, bioengineered— _she_. Charlotte tried for a grin, but it felt more like an uncomfortable baring of teeth than anything else.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m, uh Charlotte Shurley, I’m here to see Designer Novak?”

Mariah smiled. Wide and a little bit manic in the way it tugged at her eyes. “Yes, of course, Artifex! Miss Amelia will be delighted to receive you. Right this way.”

The angel took Charlotte and Hannah through a maze of white, marble and vaulted ceilings and doors nearly seamlessly integrated with the walls. Mariah didn’t speak, though Charlotte could feel the tremor of her mental frequency buzzing at the edges of her mind, like she was trying to communicate but wasn’t sure what to say. It was almost as nerve-wracking to Charlotte as if the angel were physically hovering over her.

Hannah, of course, remained dutifully silent, and Charlotte wished she could crawl into the angel’s quiet little mind and stay there.

Soon enough they found themselves standing in front of yet another door. Mariah fiddled with a touch panel on the wall beside it, and Charlotte let her eyes wander to the large framed photograph on the wall opposite. It was of Amelia Novak, her hand on the shoulder of her daughter, Claire, a once-sunny little girl of whom Charlotte hadn’t caught more than a glimpse in years. Beside Amelia was her late husband, James—all soulful blue eyes and tousled dark hair, strong-jawed and smiling. Charlotte’s mouth twitched. She’d liked James; he’d worked as a Grace Technician in the tower for years, and he would stop by the penthouse from time to time with a thousand questions about Grace that Charlotte hadn’t known how to answer. But he had been company, and that had more than often been enough.

Finally, the touch panel glowed green, and Mariah opened the door onto… what looked like a tropical beachfront.

Sand as bleached and gleaming as the stucco of the villa itself stretched out before them and was swallowed by a crystal blue sea. They stood on a covered patio, the coverings themselves nothing more than a tent of thin, vibrant cloths draped and secured via several columns. High summer sun shone through, bathing the patio in swathes of coloured light.

This time, Charlotte’s grin was genuine. Falses—hologram rooms—were common fixtures in Eden’s wealthy homes. But they almost never looked or felt quite this real. Hell, there was actually a _breeze_ , and it actually smelled like the sea.

It was so convincing that Charlotte nearly didn’t notice the woman reclining on the patio sofas beside her. The sofas surrounded a wide wooden table garnished with pitchers and platters of hors d’oeuvres. Mariah stepped forward.

“Miss Amelia, Artifex Deus Charlotte Shurley calling for you.”

The woman turned and her mouth split into a sunny smile. Amelia Novak was slender and sweet-faced, dirty blonde hair falling artlessly over bare shoulders. “Charlotte,” she greeted, voice warm. “I’m so glad you decided to stop by. Come, sit!”

Charlotte did, shuffling over with all the smoothness of a prisoner being led to the gallows. Hannah remained by Mariah’s side, looking constipated once again.

“Oh, uh.” Charlotte shook her head as she eased herself onto the sofa across from Amelia. “Can, uh, can Hannah stay? They’re the Servile, I was wondering—”

Amelia’s brow furrowed. “Oh! Of course. Hannah,” she turned to the angel, and her teeth were bright, “would you like to sit with us?”

The purpose of that phrasing was subtle, but not lost on Charlotte. Hannah blinked, and Charlotte could quite literally hear them turning thoughts over in their head. _Not a command, my choice, what do I want, what_ do _I want?_

And, of course—“No, Mrs. Novak. I would prefer to retire with Mariah until Charlotte has further need of me.” They shot Charlotte a look, and even with their minimal understanding of how to properly express emotions with their face, the question within was clear.

“It’s okay, Hannah,” Charlotte said, head bobbing in an absent sort of nod. “I’ll call, okay? You go hang out with Mariah, it’s okay. I said that. Go ahead.”

Hannah nodded in return, and the two angels left the False without another word. Amelia turned to Charlotte with a bemused smile.

“She calls you Charlotte!” she said. “How long has she been with you? I don’t think I remember seeing her last time I was at the tower…”

Charlotte cleared her throat, mouth twitching. “I met them yesterday, actually. Is Mariah Pre-Fall?”

Amelia laughed. “You’ve got a good eye. I—oh, where are my manners, have a glass of the Speet Mix.” She poured the contents of one of the pitchers, a fizzy pink liquid, into a crystal glass. Offered it to Charlotte with a conspiratorial purse of her lips. “I had a crate ordered from South City. Please, try it, it’s _so_ refreshing.”

Charlotte accepted the glass and took a sip. The Speet Mix was, indeed, refreshing—light and sweet and crackling. She made an appreciative noise, and Amelia clapped her hands together.

“Oh, I knew you’d love it. And yes, Mariah _is_ Pre-Fall. One of the last, in fact. I found her at an auction on the Waterfront last year, can you believe it?” She laughed again. “All my respects to you, Charlotte; she’s an incredible piece of machinery. Of course, she’s more than that now. Spend enough time with an angel, and…” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that, it’s a person.”

Charlotte swallowed another sip of Speet and uncurled her pointer finger from around the glass, shooting towards Amelia. “Exactly,” she said. “That’s, uh, that’s actually kind of why I’m here. You bought Hael, and Hael was sort of my regular, and I just,” she shrugged, “kinda wanted a chance to say goodbye.”

Amelia’s expression stiffened for a split second, and it belatedly dawned on Charlotte that telling one of Equin’s top angel designers that she was only there to catch up with the help might not have been particularly tactful. But the stiffness melted under a look of genuine apology as quickly as it had come.

“I had no idea you were so close,” she said, bringing a hand to her collar. “If I had, I wouldn’t have bought her.”

“W-we’re not, really.” Charlotte waved a hand. “It’s okay.”

“No, you came all the way down here…” Amelia leaned in and patted Charlotte’s knee. “I’ll buzz for her.” She reached for a small blue panel on the table and tapped it in a patterned succession— _onetwo pause threefourfive pause six_ —before leaning back and taking another sip of her own glass of Speet.

Hael arrived about a minute later, looking pinker and rounder draped in yellow and sky blue rather than the traditional public whites. They were still bald, and when they turned their head to offer a bow to Amelia, Charlotte caught sight of the Halo at the base of their skull. A blue, upside-down crescent made of the same material as the panel on Amelia’s table—the Grace control point, the angelic access panel. Charlotte wondered whether Amelia would get Hael a wig to cover it up, or if she would leave it exposed until her new purchase proved themselves worthy of such privacy.

Hael blinked when their eyes landed on Charlotte, who scrambled to stand.

“Ms. Shurley,” they said. “I did not expect to see you here.”

“I… noticed you were gone,” Charlotte said lamely. “Thought I-I-I’d stop in and, uh, make sure you were settling in okay.”

Hael’s mouth quirked into a small smile. “Of course I am, Ms. Shurley. Ms. Novak is an exceedingly gracious mistress.” They nodded at Amelia, who seemed touched. “I hope my absence from the tower hasn’t upset you—”

“Oh, hell—uh, of course not.” Charlotte shook her head and tightened her hand around her glass. “I just…” _You were a constant. You were there. You were something real and repeating and now you’re another fleeting thing_. “I wanted to know where you’d gone.”

Hael bowed their head and thanked Charlotte for her concern. Amelia dismissed them and Charlotte sank back onto the sofa, her mind already settling back into static as the sheer patheticness of her excursion began to crystalize. Was she really so desperate she was willing to chase down whatever shadow of a friend she might make, just so she could look them in the eye one last time and stammer out a _hope you’re well_? Was she really so maladjusted that even angels found her an awkward carryon of a person?

She was Artifex Deus, their god and Creator, and so they respected her. But none seemed to be able to stand her presence long.

Amelia was talking—something about some malfunctioning border-guard angels.

“… blame them, of course,” she was saying. “The new line they’ve introduced was shoddily made. I know I’m biased when it comes to this, but in my opinion, the craftsmanship on the last border-guard model was flawless. Of course, the last Breach had to go and get the Castiels discontinued. One faulty unit spoils everything.” She shook her head. “I maintain that that was production’s fault, not mine. There was nothing wrong with my design. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Charlotte blinked, shrugged. “You’re right. They were great. Just that one bug, though…”

“Yes, that one bug.” Amelia sighed. “But there have been _six_ Gadreels who’ve simply stopped working these past few months. _Six_. The Designer Floor has been going nuts trying to suss out the cause, but have they discontinued the line? Of course not. It’s all politics, Charlotte, I’m telling you…”

_Blast, so loud, so loud and then silence. It’s like losing children, losing all those voices. And then they cut up the living, cut out their hearts and their minds and sever nerves until they have to relearn how to walk, talk, think. Until they can be taught to serve from birth, because their factory settings can no longer be too human. Because then they are a threat. Because your children are not your children not your creations not your angels—they are not fit to live unless they are fit to be slaves._

 

Charlotte took another sip of the Speet and sent a buzz out to the Servile who had their ride. “Yeah… politics.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And heeere we go with the second storyline! I realize that even though she's a genderbent Chuck, Charlotte more or less becomes an OC through a combination of the AU altering her persona and the story's evolution over time. I hope y'all enjoy her regardless! 
> 
> (Also because I had a couple people concerned about this when I posted this last: yes, the Castiels have been discontinued and Dean is assumed dead, but there IS background Destiel in this fic so... *cough cough*) 
> 
> Fun fact about this chapter: Here we see the budding Novak subplot that never came to be. The idea was that since the line of Castiels were modelled after Amelia's dead husband, Claire would be dealing with the emotional weirdness of having her father more or less die twice and would eventually become a more important character as she rises up to do... stuff... that I can't talk about right now because spoilers. I wound up cutting it to keep the story from getting too cluttered, but I have a LOT of headcanons regarding Claire and Amelia Novak in this 'verse. (Also Kevin. Kevin was going to be a thing.)


	4. Perks

The morning after contact was established, Gabriel awoke naked in Sam’s arms. His chin was tucked over Gabriel’s shoulder, one long leg wrapped around his thighs. Gabriel had his hand on one of Sam’s wrists, and he turned it over, holding it closer to his face. He closed his eyes, sent a brief communiqué to his neurocentre and felt the snick and whir of his inner mechanisms realigning. Opened his eyes again.

The world was filtered in blue, with a white emblem in the center—a multi-banded circle made up of strings of the symbols Charlotte Shurley had designed for Grace coding. Gabriel moved his eye until the emblem was positioned over the center of Sam’s wrist.

Snick and whir, and the flesh between his eyes split to reveal the tiny point of blue beneath: his Third Eye. A thin beam of white light shot forth, illuminating the emblem on Sam’s wrist. He waited seven seconds, then called the light back—the emblem glowed a moment before fading as the code sank beneath the skin. A standard tracking seal.

His epidermis reknit and his eyes returned to their normal functions, Gabriel sighed happily and wriggled against the solid warmth at his back. Sam’s crotch was nestled against his ass, and the archangel rocked slowly back into the gentle pressure of his soft cock.

They’d cuddled for a while after their initial orgasms the night before, until cuddling had become friction had become fervent rutting, and Sam had spilled between their stomachs with a fist coiled tight in Gabriel’s hair. Luckily, they’d come at roughly the same time, and Gabriel could claim Sam’s mess as a combined effort.

He’d then proceeded to clean Sam off with his mouth, and from then the night spiraled into a bit of a haze.

He had no idea what time it was. He knew he’d slept for seven hours and five minutes, as that was the length he’d preset himself to sleep yesterday, but he’d been too out of it to really notice what time it had been when he shut off for the night. It’d been a while since he’d allowed that to happen on the job—Raphael hated it when he lost track of time. Gabriel’s lips twitched. Truth be told, Raphael hated most of his habits. And the other archangel insisted they _were_ habits, no matter how many times Gabriel assured him there was a method to his seeming madness.

Like now. His continued rubbing against Sam’s now half-hard cock might appear on his report as an unnecessary indulgence, but Gabriel reasoned that waking Sam this way would be more conducive to strengthening their bond.

_Plus_ , he thought as he took his own hardening length in hand, _now I’m just horny_.

He stroked himself once, twice, before he felt Sam rustle at his back. The young man hummed in his ear and coiled his leg tighter around Gabriel.

“Morning,” he murmured, and Gabriel didn’t know whether to thank grog or desire for the smoky husk of his voice. Sam was starting to push his hips forward in a slow, lazy grind, and Gabriel let out a small moan at the feeling of Sam’s erection sliding against the crease of his ass.

“Mmm…” Sam shifted slightly, caught Gabriel’s chin and turned his head to meet him in a sloppy kiss. His other hand was roaming across the archangel’s chest, down to the swell of his belly. “Gabe… wanna watch you. Wanna…”

_Fuck. Distraction._ “Baby, hold on, can we... _nng_ , can we try something?”

Sam nuzzled at Gabriel’s ear. “Mm, what did you have in mind?”

Gabriel reached around behind them and cupped at Sam’s ass as he rolled himself onto his stomach, tugged Sam along with him so the young man was draped over his back. Sam let out a pleased little questioning noise at the change, a noise that melted into a moan as Gabriel brought his hand to his own ass and spread his cheeks to let Sam’s cock settle between them.

“Slide,” Gabriel said, lifting his hips. “Just… _fuck_ , Sam, _move._ ”

Sam grunted, and the weight of him was gone. Gabriel felt him adjust, straddle Gabriel’s legs and grip his ass and hips in both hands, holding him spread around his cock. Then he was moving, and Gabriel was in heaven. He slid slow, passage aided by the slick of precome, and the friction against Gabriel’s asshole was almost agonizing in how good it was. His plumbing on that end was purely decorative, and sensitive to a fucking fault—if he hadn’t known any better, Gabriel would have strongly suspected that Charlotte had built him for bottoming.

The archangel shoved his hips back, crossed his ankles behind Sam’s legs and tightened his fists in the sheets as Sam tightened his grip on him and picked up speed. _Fuck_ , he was going to leave bruises, and Gabriel couldn’t wait for them to bloom.

“More,” he gasped out, “harder, _more_ , Sam, _please._ ”

“God…” Sam’s voice was still early-morning thick, crackling with lust. “Gabe, God, _Gabe_ , want you so fucking bad…”

Everything was fire. Gabriel was dissolving into a mass of electricity and desire, and he ached for Sam to go deeper, rougher, to push Gabriel to the edge of breaking and burn with him. What Sam was doing felt good, felt wonderful, but it wasn’t _enough_. It wasn’t enough, and Gabriel was strung so tight with the need to _make_ it enough that he thought he might snap.

And what killed him dead was the fact that he _knew_ , just fucking _knew_ that Sam was holding back.

Nevertheless, there was still an impressive cock sliding against his hole, a pair of large hands gripping him tight, and a beautiful Sam making inhuman noises behind him. Gabriel would be remiss if he didn’t count his blessings.

“Sam,” he moaned, “Sam, m’close…”

“Me too.” Sam relaxed his grip on Gabriel slightly. “Can you… can you turn? Wanna see your face, baby, wanna watch you come…”

Gabriel stiffened for an instant before an idea occurred. He wriggled his ass away from Sam’s cock, slid down the mattress between Sam’s legs. Turned onto his back so that Sam was straddling his abdomen. Took his cock in one hand, out of sight, and grabbed one of Sam’s with the other, bringing both to curl around Sam’s length.

“Want you like this,” he said, moving both his and Sam’s hand in tandem. “This okay?”

Sam met Gabriel’s gaze, hazel eyes blown and wanting, and he made a sound halfway between a choke and a groan. “God, yes.”

They stroked themselves through, all sparks and sighs and shaky breaths. Kept their eyes locked as Sam leaned forward, as their free hands found each other and twined together in the sheets.

“Almost,” Sam murmured. “Fuck, almost…”

“I— _Sam!_ ” Gabriel’s head fell back against the mattress as he came, his orgasm rippling through every sensor from his head to his toes. He was melting, a useless, formless mass beneath Sam as Sam followed on a strangled moan that sounded vaguely like his name.

Hot come streaked across Gabriel’s chest, his throat, splashing over his chin. Sam was stiff, and then he was sliding over to collapse in a boneless heap facedown on the mattress, half-on Gabriel and half-off. While he caught his breath, Gabriel brought his hand up to his chest and smeared it—and then his cock—with some of Sam’s come, intending to disguise it as his own.

After a moment, Sam huffed and rolled onto his side, still half-draped over Gabriel, in what was quickly becoming Gabriel’s favourite position of his. Their hands were still clasped, the archangel realized distantly. He turned his head towards Sam and the two of them exchanged blissful smiles.

“… Hey,” Gabriel said.

Sam laughed. “We met _yesterday_.”

“We did indeed.”

Sam nodded, and his smile softened. He leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss to the corner of Gabriel’s mouth. “I really, really like you,” he said. His cheeks flushed as he said it, and Gabriel’s heart broke.

“Yeah,” he said, and squeezed Sam’s hand, because what he was about to say was very true. “Me too.”

 

They took turns showering—Sam first, leaving Gabriel naked in his bed with nothing but the hum and swell of the pipes for company. Gabriel took the opportunity to blink his eyes blue and do a quick Grace scan of the apartment, and found nothing out of the ordinary. If the kid had anything to hide, he’d hidden it well. And if that was the case, Gabriel would find it soon enough.

Sam returned to his bedroom pink and fresh and with a towel riding low on his hips. Gabriel was startled by how badly he wanted to touch him again—run his hands over Sam and explore, revel in the minute sensations of skin on skin. Bask in that organic heat, the unselfconscious poetry of a human body. More importantly, a beautiful human body that wanted Gabriel.

As Sam’s eyes raked over his naked form, amused and bright and hungry, Gabriel had to remind himself that he did, in fact, have a certain modicum of self-control.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he drawled, cocking an eyebrow and spreading his legs like a centerfold. “Like what you see?”

Sam wrinkled his nose. “Don’t you dare, I _just_ got clean.”

“Mmm. But why be clean when dirty is so much more fun?”

“I,” Sam said, opening his closet and pulling out clothes, “happen to like not having dried come all over me.”

“Hey, don’t knock it, it’s good for the skin.” Gabriel crawled to the edge of the mattress and swung his legs over. “Still,” he said, getting to his feet, “I’ll concede that going out in public like this might be perceived as _indecent_ , so. Got any extra towels?”

“There’s one in the bathroom waiting for you.” Sam bent over to pull up his pants, and Gabriel pinched his ass.

Sam shot straight up with a yelp. Gabriel grinned. “Normally I’m not one for bragging,” he said as he sauntered out of the room, “but _damn_. I scored big time, bucko.”

 

The entry staircase was too narrow for two people, Gabriel thought. He and Sam stood before the door to the building’s antechamber, a scant few inches of space lodged between them. Sam was rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, his other on the doorknob, and Gabriel gave him a _look_.

“If this is your awkward, drawn-out version of ‘wham, bam, thank you, man’, I could do without,” he said, and the acid on his tongue was only slightly exaggerated.

Sam ducked his head, shaggy hair falling over his eyes. “I meant it when I said I really like you.”

“But.”

“Well, more like _so_.” Sam looked up and tried for a smile. “It’s not you, I swear.”

Gabriel swiped a hand across his brow. “Whew! And for a second there I thought you were gonna be clichéd.”

“I’m serious!” Sam was laughing, but there was no humour to it. “I’m just… not in a place right now where,” he gestured between the two of them, “ _this_ can happen. It’s not… practical, I’ve got too much shit…” He rubbed the back of his neck and wilted. “I just can’t, Gabe.”

And that was it, of course. The loose thread that Gabriel needed to pluck at, tug and tug until the seam split and Sam’s secrets came spilling out. Flesh to add to the bones of suspicion that Raphael had attributed to him.

Gabriel shrugged. “I’m not looking for anything serious, Sambo. If you just wanna fool around…”

“That’s just it. Last night I thought I could do that, but now I’m not so sure.” Sam’s mouth tightened. He shook his head. “It’d turn into something, and I can’t let it right now. I’m sorry.”

Forced recalibration, that was all it was. Unexpected but manageable. Gabriel had to play the game to win it, after all, and the mission would yield nothing if he pushed Sam too far. He’d navigated his way through worse setbacks.

A little post-coital guilt meant nothing. And if Gabriel was affronted now, it was only because Sam had seemed to be playing along so nicely until that moment.

Gabriel nodded. “Okay. Okay, I get it. It’s all good, kiddo.” He smiled, pulled it back ever so slightly so that Sam could tell it was forced. “I’ll soldier on.”

Sam’s eyes flickered, then he ducked his head and pecked Gabriel on the cheek. “Thank you,” he said. “I really _am_ sorry.”

Gabriel waved a hand as Sam opened the door for him and led him out into the antechamber. “It’s _okay_ , Sammy, I’ll survive. But, uh… if I happen to see you at The Singing Glass, I can’t promise I won’t _slip into_ your booth.” He wagged his eyebrows, and Sam snorted.

“I’ll try to contain myself if you do,” he said.

“Oh no, don’t.” Gabriel stepped over the threshold of the final door and turned to flash Sam a grin. “I like watching you fall apart.”

He winked, and Sam’s mouth twitched. _Leave ‘em laughing_ , Gabriel thought as he began to make his way back to his place. _If you leave ‘em laughing, you know you’ve left ‘em wanting more_.

In this case, he’d have to fight to make Sam take what he wanted, but he didn’t figure that would be all that difficult. Sam was a young human in his sexual prime—horny, rash, and lusting after Gabriel’s expertly crafted ass. Gabriel just had to push his buttons a little and the mission would be back on track.

The question remained. Which buttons, and how hard?

 

The tracking seal released a low tone. Unwavering and unique, like a voice calling for him. It led Gabriel exactly where he thought it would—to the same place where Sam Winchester had fallen under Equin’s suspicion. To the border.

Those same chromatophores that allowed Gabriel’s flesh to sport bruises also allowed him a certain level of camouflage. The effect wasn’t flawless, but under the cover of night it didn’t have to be. He was a blur, a pocket of distorted air slinking after the seal’s tone through the streets.

Gabriel took the time, as he slunk, to make further observations on Sam Winchester’s home turf. Back in the days before the Fall it had been called Similkameen, a pit stop of a town so small its only boast was its two-screen movie theatre, lovingly dubbed The Duplex. The town had since been renamed—Bromley, they called it now—and expanded somewhat, as it now served as one of the easternmost settlements of Eden. It was an architectural melting pot of Pre-Fall brick and mortar and modern glass, a skyline like a mouthful of low, uneven teeth rising from asphalt gums. The asphalt itself had been partially replaced with the tempered solar-panel tiles that graced the surfaces of Eden’s highways and larger city streets, but only on Bromley’s big thoroughfares. The side streets and alleys were all still tar and cement. Hovering above the tallest building on metallic stilts was an ugly, glowing billboard screen advertising Equin’s angels as if they were actually in competition with another brand. The Duplex had been gutted and refurnished, but still only sported two screens.

Bromley née Similkameen was neglected and run-down and, in the eyes of Equin and the Senate, only worth its strategic position as a home for the local border outpost technicians. And as Gabriel made his way past its outskirts on the tail of a tracking seal, he reminded himself that Sam had grown up here. In the recobbled corpse of a time without angels, its flesh half-cannibalized by modernity and half-left to rot. It was, Gabriel thought with a smile, a breeding ground for dissenters.

He found Sam standing by an outpost, a stout glass and concrete building squatting at the edge of the borderline. Gabriel stopped where he was—invisible in the alley splitting two brick buildings at the edge of Bromley. There was a long stretch of dusty soil and scrub between him and Sam, and he didn’t want to risk moving closer just yet, not with the outpost’s lights illuminating a wide circle of earth around it.

This was nothing new. The entire reason why Sam had been marked for investigation was because of his frequent nighttime visits to this particular outpost. Always on certain days, at specific times. He was, Gabriel had noted during the groundwork stage, frequently seen socially with one of the technicians responsible for maintaining the Grace coding on the border. _Charlene Bradbury. Born June 28 th, 90 AF. Border Code Tech. Status: Under Suspicion, High Risk_. It was entirely possible that Sam was simply visiting a friend at work—a breach of protocol on Bradbury’s part, but hardly grounds for arrest. Of course, that didn’t explain why the security camera footage always jumped slightly after every time Sam entered and left the outpost, as if the material between were a loop. It also didn’t explain why the computerized timestamp report from one of Bradbury’s shifts showed a weakness in border strength that went unfixed for several minutes, a weakness coinciding with the time of Sam’s visit. A weakness noted by the computer as a _consistent occurrence suggestive of cyclical external influence_ , despite the fact that it had never appeared on one of her reports before.

It could have been an anomaly, a computer malfunction, a big misunderstanding. But it was a highly potential risk, and all signs pointed to Samuel Winchester as the catalyst.

Gabriel only waited a brief moment before the door to the outpost opened. He refocused his vision to get a closer look at Charlene Bradbury. Short, pale, red hair, and far more colourful than someone with a job in border code tech had any right to be.

She and Sam didn’t speak as she beckoned him inside. _Great._ The outposts were soundproofed, and Gabriel couldn’t exactly break in without causing a scene. Which meant he was stuck outside waiting until further notice.

He paced the scrub for a while, then, upon concluding that that was incredibly boring, set about looking for a stick. Found one snapped off in the dirt, and approached the border—a wall of vaguely shimmering air that towered over the outpost, over the town, as far upwards as the naked eye could trace. Gabriel and Raphael had led the charge when it was created one hundred and fifteen years before, in a concentrated blast of sigils, Grace, and coding that Charlotte had orchestrated to protect humanity from the Fall. Or at least what little scrap of humanity she could—the border casting, though powerful, hadn’t had enough range to save everyone. Just one thick slab of Pacific North-West, plus a chunk of what had once been called Canada. Gabriel remembered watching as the wall went up, as people scrambled to be on the right side of it, as all those trapped outside the quarantine screamed and clawed at the rising tide of Grace that now stood solidified before him.

He poked it with the stick.

The wood slipped through, of course—the wall was never meant to keep anything _in_. But as Gabriel drew it back, he noted with a bit of savage glee that the dusty bark had been stripped, revealing the mealy, rotting core.

He tossed the stick aside. That would show up in Bradbury’s report for the night, he knew, and Raphael would have his ass for being careless. But chucking things at and through the border was a common pastime for local kids, and the incident would hardly arouse any suspicion.

Gabriel sat in the dirt and continued to wait. Chucked a couple of stones at the border, kept an eye and an ear out for Sam. It occurred to him that if Bradbury had indeed hid a weak point in the border for weeks on end, she could have the coding skills necessary to hide Sam from angelic detection while he did… whatever it was he was doing. Of course, if that was the case, Gabriel had no way of either proving or disproving it. At least not yet.

There was movement on the other side of the border wall, and Gabriel watched as a small furry thing waddled towards the shimmering air. Like most creatures seen that could be observed outside Eden, it looked nothing like any of the pre-Fall animals that he and the history books remembered. A common side effect of being on the wrong side of Charlotte’s quarantine. Going off Gabriel’s limited mental menagerie, the thing looked sort of like a skunk crossbred with a turtle, with a touch of rat tossed in for good measure.

The skurtle sniffed the wall, pawed at the earth a moment as if deliberating on whether or not to proceed further. To Gabriel’s—probably a little sadistic, if he was being honest with himself—delight, it did.

The first press of wet, ratty nose to the border had no effect. It was a simple case of squishy meets solid, and if the skurtle had the sense to leave well enough alone, that was all it would ever be. But it didn’t. That second press, Gabriel knew, sent a jolt of electricity through the small animal’s body, just painful enough to be a deterrent. Luckily for the skurtle, it decided a third attempt wasn’t worth it and shuffled off once more.

Gabriel wasn’t _that_ relieved. Only slightly. A third touch to the outside of the wall would’ve been even more painful, and a fourth… he shook his head, a gesture he’d learned from Charlotte, as if that would actually help dispel the memories of burning flesh and muffled shrieks.

 

_A woman claws at him, beats on him, screaming for the sister she left behind. “You said you’d save us!” She rips his clothes but she can’t tear his skin, her nails are too blunt and she isn’t yet willing to bite. “You said you’d save us all!”_

_And on the other side a woman weeping, her hands charred and pulpy from prolonged exposure to the wall. Gabriel can’t see her, he’s not looking, he can’t see her…_

 

Movement out of the corner of his eye, and Gabriel looked up to see Sam emerging from the outpost. Bradbury clapped a hand on his arm, gaze sympathetic. Sam’s mouth twitched in response. Like they had earlier, they said nothing to each other as they parted ways. Bradbury retreated inside the outpost and Sam began to make his way back into town.

Gabriel was tempted to take a shortcut around Sam and “accidentally” bump into him on the street. _What, oh no, I’m just out for a midnight stroll. Yourself?_ Of course, that would only raise Sam’s suspicions, as well as his hackles. Gabriel needed to give him space, give him time, let him miss the archangel a little. Patience was hardly one of Gabriel’s stronger virtues, but he wasn’t incapable of exercising it.

He followed Sam back into Bromley, back through the grid of streets, back to Sam’s house. No other stops. Gabriel had to admit a twinge of disappointment. He had hoped to catch Sam at whatever he was up to that night, to spend the rest of the investigation teasing just the _why_ out of Sam rather than the _why_ and the _what_. Which meant a longer investigation, more personal investment, and a deeper bond of trust to forge between himself and Sam before he could get any closer to the truth.

As he made his way from Sam’s door back to his own place, he realized that he didn’t mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to write something else but it just turned into porn. 
> 
> Fun fact: While Bromley/Similkameen is a fictional town, it's named after a couple of real landmarks in British Columbia, Canada (which is both where Supernatural is filmed and where I grew up). The Similkameen is both a river and a region of BC that overlaps with the Okanagan Valley, which is where most of this fic is set. The name "Bromley" comes from a national park known as Bromley Rock, which makes an appearance in a couple of chapters (hint: Sam and Gabriel have sex there, too). My family used to roadtrip through the Okanagan at least once a year when I still lived in BC - in fact, I wrote some of the later chapters (the ones set deeper in the valley) while vacationing there in 2016!


	5. The Slaughterhouse

When Charlotte was eight years old, her father had had an affair. At the time, Charlotte hadn’t known what was going on, of course. She noticed that Daddy was spending a lot of time with his friend Omar, the funny man with the dark beard who sometimes brought her caramels. She noticed that Momma was angry a lot more, downing harsh, bitter drinks and snapping her teeth at everything that moved. And of course she noticed when Daddy moved out, when he said he was going to live with Omar, when Momma started calling them “The Fags” behind their backs.

Daddy had explained a few weeks after the fact, over the phone. He said that he loved Omar the way he’d once loved Momma, that that kind of love could exist between anyone, boy and girl or boys or girls. Charlotte had hummed a mumbly “okay” and hung up the phone after they exchanged goodbyes. Cast a wary eye at her Momma, who was trying to drink the bitter stuff less but still couldn’t help but snap her teeth.

“He’s full of shit, Lottie,” Momma said when Charlotte relayed her Daddy’s words. “That ain’t real mom-and-dad love, it’s pants-love, and it’s perverted. Don’t listen to him.”

Momma talked a lot about different kinds of love—mom-and-dad, pants, and family were the big three, though she’d also been known to mention rarer types like puppy or diamond. Charlotte, utterly unfamiliar with most of these feelings, wasn’t sure she fully understood.

“What the Fags feel is a tug,” Momma explained. “Nasty sort of tingle in your undies, it makes you wanna get naked. Don’t listen to that one, Lottie, not even when you’re older.

“Real mom-and-dad love is more like… stepping into a hot bath. It hurts at first, like you’re losing skin. Then you get used to it, and it’s warm, like a hug or coming home.” Momma smiled a moment, then her mouth twisted sharp. “Then after you’ve been in there a while it turns cool and oily and you realize you’re sitting in a cold stewpot of your own filth. That’s when you gotta jump out and scrub yourself clean.”

Charlotte grew up dreading those loves. Even when she realized that Daddy and Omar were very happy and very much in mom-and-dad love. Even when she made it through high school and college without ever once feeling the urge to get naked or hop in a tub. Even then, she carried the latent fear that she would one day wake up and pitch headfirst into something from which she wouldn’t be able to walk away.

Her Momma had died two years before the archangels were finished, and her Daddy six years after. Omar had made it to the Fall, but that had been well after Charlotte had stopped aging and cut off contact with her remaining family and friends, and she didn’t know what had happened to him when the wall went up.

Even so, Charlotte remembered.

She remembered now, as she descended to the floor just below her penthouse. To the bare, dark room where the four Equin chairs were waiting for her, standing in a half-circle around a thin metal pedestal. Atop the pedestal was secured a spherical chunk of blue, glass-like matter twice the size of a soccer ball. It was chipped and glowing faintly, sputtering like a dying bulb.

“We didn’t give enough last month,” one of the chairs said, smiling softly. He was frailer than his peers, small and pale with skin like wrinkled wax paper and a voice to match. He sat in an ornate wheelchair, attended by a custom Servile with no facial features save a pair of glassy eyes.

“No, we did not,” said the second chair. He was tall and broad and cold, with close-cropped grey hair and the sort of grin that always looked to be on the verge of twisting into a snarl. His meaty hands, Charlotte knew, were capable—and fond—of snapping spines.

“We’re going to have to take more blood, Artifex,” said the third. Charlotte had nearly thrown up the first time she’d seen him—his body was peppered with pockmarks and boils and patches of rashy skin, and the whole of him smelled of old pus. He bared yellow teeth at her now, in what she supposed was meant to be a placating smile.

“Only if you so desire, of course.” The fourth and final chair, the Man in the Suit, didn’t bother smiling. He never did. Charlotte suspected that if he tried, the expression would be as hollow as his promise of choice.

She held her right arm out over the sphere, cursing the way she trembled as she did so. After all this time she was still nothing but a dirty coward.

The Man in the Suit stepped forward, drawing a long silver needle from his sleeve. He held it hovering over Charlotte’s outstretched flesh while his other hand steadied hers. His skin was soft and loose and cool, his grip disturbingly gentle. Charlotte had to remind herself not to cringe away from his touch.

The silver needle descended, a sharp pressure against the pad of Charlotte’s pointer finger. Her skin burst around it, as easy and clean as piercing ripe fruit, and blood beaded in the wake of the receding metal. Charlotte skewed her eyes shut and gnawed at her lip as the Man in the Suit poked holes in the tips of each of her fingers on that hand.

When she opened her eyes, he was wiping the needle clean on a silk handkerchief that he then proceeded to stuff into his breast pocket. Slipped the needle back up his sleeve and gestured to the sphere.

“Go on, Artifex.”

Charlotte sighed and placed her hand on the sphere, following its movement with a twitching eye as she smeared her blood across the uneven surface.

Red streaked and her fingers throbbed, and Charlotte felt the sphere begin to prickle hot beneath her touch. So hot it burned ( _like losing skin_ ), painful and sharp. The feeling spread, shooting up her arm and through her body, making embers of her flesh and molten wax of her veins.

As the heat enveloped her she grew acclimatized to it, and her mind began to wander. She thought of Hannah, and of Hael. Thought of Amelia Novak’s Castiels and the mass destruction of their line. Thought of those first few years spent alone with the archangels as she perfected her designs and Equin prepped the angels for the commercial world. Her children, her family, the biggest love she’d known how to feel—then blast, so loud, so loud and then silence.

The voices of the angels grew louder in her head, a sudden wave of gratitude that swelled and broke and settled back down again, and Charlotte felt her chest tighten.

( _That’s when you gotta jump out and scrub yourself clean_.)

Charlotte drew her hand away from the sphere, now glowing bright and strong. It was larger too, its surface smooth and appearing several layers thicker. The chips would come away again—each single slice would be ground up and mixed with a drop of water, and the resulting etheric vapor would be inserted into the Halos of freshly minted angels.

The Artifex Deus had first created solid Grace, and it was only by her blood that it was replenished. Only by her blood that the source of all angelic power remained charged. Only by her love and fear that her blood was shed at all.

She clenched her sticky fist, feeling the familiar greasy post-charging cool settle into her skin. “I’ll be upstairs,” she said.

The four chairs nodded at her. Three of them smiled. The Man in the Suit continued to look vaguely bored.

“We will see you next month, Artifex,” he said.

Charlotte returned to the penthouse and took a long, hot shower.

 

Hannah arrived two hours later, wheeling a trolley stacked with Charlotte’s lunch. It was her standard order—roast beef sandwich on a bed of potato skins. Though, of course, said beef was actually genetically altered, artificially flavoured eel. Charlotte gave a thin smile as Hannah uncapped the bottle of beer that had come along with the food.

“Not a moment too soon,” she said on a shaky laugh. “F-fucking… feeling so fucking low today. Need the, y’know, the sugars and iron and… booze.”

“Is this a side effect of our Surge, Charlotte?”

Charlotte blinked. “What?”

Hannah poured the beer into a glass and handed it to Charlotte before speaking. “I am referring to your current state of lowness. Is this what happens to you every time you provide us with a Grace Surge?”

Charlotte shrugged. “Yeah. I-i-it takes a lot out of me, energywise. And it sorta makes me think of stuff I don’t like thinking about, so.”

“Is there any way to alleviate these symptoms?”

“If there was and I knew about it, I’m _pre-e-etty_ sure I would’ve already taken advantage.” There was a bite to her voice, and it startled Charlotte into diving nosefirst into her beer.

“I am a Servile Model, Charlotte,” Hannah said. “I am merely assessing my ability to serve.”

“Yeah, well…” _You were all meant for more than that._

WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, I AM CERTAIN THAT I WAS MEANT SOLELY FOR THE INTENDED PURPOSES OF MY MODEL TYPE.

Charlotte’s eyes widened. She hadn’t meant for the thought to make its way onto the Radio. But her head was always much looser, and the connection between herself and the angels much stronger, after replenishing the Grace. And she had been thinking at Hannah—fuck. Oh, Raphael wasn’t going to like that, if Raphael ever bothered to find out.

The angel was watching her, all hollow eyes and empty expression, and Charlotte tightened her grip on the beer glass.

“You,” she said, “have no idea what you were meant for. What you were meant to _be_ , oh my _God_ Hannah, you have no fucking idea.”

Hannah cocked their head. “May I ask what we were meant to be, Charlotte?”

A short laugh, and Charlotte took another gulp of her bitter drink. “Million dollar question, Hannah baby, and the answer’s… well, okay, the answer’s kinda stupid.”

The angel didn’t comment, only continued to stare. They were still, so fucking still, so like a corpse.

Charlotte sighed. “Better,” she said quietly. “You were supposed to be _better_ than us. Humans, I mean.”

“In what way?”

“All of them. People kinda suck, Hannah.”

Another swallow of beer. It wasn’t even good beer, not the kind Charlotte remembered from before the Fall—this stuff was synthetic and tasted like it, too sweet and watery. But it was the best Eden had to offer, so she took it like a god.

“I assume from the context that to suck is to be… inadequate?” Hannah’s expression was still blank, but Charlotte could tell—could _hear_ —that the angel was thinking.

“More like to be complete shit, but yeah.”

Hannah’s face twitched, a triumphant sort of twitch remarkable only in that it actually corresponded to a discernable emotion. “Then your reasoning is faulty.”

Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “How d’you figure that?”

Hannah cocked their head again. An angelic question mark, like what they were about to say was so incredibly obvious it seemed impossible that anyone could’ve missed it. “You are human, Charlotte.”

It took a moment for the weight of the statement to sink in. When it did, Charlotte thought she might crumble under it. “And _you_ don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, grimacing at the audibility of the lump in her throat.

“I know that you are our Creator,” Hannah said, “and I know that you created us to be an improvement on your kind. You had a plan for us. Now how could you presume to give us life and purpose if you were not somehow deserving of such a responsibility? How could you presume to create a being greater than yourself?”

Charlotte barked a laugh. Took a swipe at her watering eyes, clutched her glass like a lifeline and prayed she didn’t shatter it. “Maybe I’m not deserving, m-maybe you were all doomed to fucking… i-i-implode on me like you did because I thought I _could_ make something better, maybe…”

“You are our Creator,” Hannah repeated. “Perhaps you are the exception to your own rule.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a pathetic shlub of a crazy cat lady too incompetent to actually take care of a fucking cat,” Charlotte spat. Hannah didn’t recoil, and somehow that made it worse so Charlotte allowed herself to deflate, gaze trailing to her glass. “And because… i-if I, if I _had_ deserved to make you, I would’ve been able to stop it. The Fall.”

There was a long stretch of silence, and when Charlotte looked up again Hannah was sitting on the floor in front of her. Their legs were folded neatly under them, their hands were resting on their thighs, and their expression was an expectant sort of blank.

“You speak,” they said, “and I listen.”

Charlotte smiled. It almost hurt, how much she meant it. “Okay,” she said. “Okay…”

 

Days tended to blur into one another in Charlotte’s penthouse. Time between her set commitments stretched like pulled gum, noise and distraction and obligate bodily functions all tangled together in a brambled fog. Her days were marked by interruptions—Serviles bringing food and drink, scheduled visits from the Servus Dei, her monthly (non-biological) bloodletting. All the entertainment she could ever hope for was at her disposal, but so much of what was out there failed to permeate her soggy brain. Nostalgia helped, but it was hard to find copies of _Appetite For Destruction_ these days.

(Hell, it was hard just being the only flesh-and-blood Guns ‘n’ Roses fan still living. There was something indescribably tragic about teaching your ungrateful android son the lyrics to “Sweet Child O’ Mine” just so you could have a hairbrush karaoke partner.)

So the fog rolled on through the years. Or so it had until Hannah. Hannah seemed determined to break through, and it was working.

That afternoon Charlotte told them everything—about what it had been like to be at the center of the conflict that led to the Fall. Lucifer pulling one way and Michael the other, catching Charlotte in a vicious tug of war between two volatile children.

( _“You said we are better, why should we serve when we are better?”_

 _“We owe our loyalty where we owe our lives, and we owe our lives to you.”_ )

“Yes, I am aware of much of this,” Hannah said, almost thoughtfully, when Charlotte had finished.

“Well, _yeah_ , everyone’s aware.” Charlotte shook her head. “But just the bare bones. N-not the details of the—of what happened.” _Smells of melting plastic and burning hair, wire and blood and metal and flesh_ —

“Actually, I am familiar with the details as well.” THOSE ONES IN PARTICULAR.

Charlotte’s gaze snapped up. “How the _fuck_? You’re top of the line, you’ve only been around what, a month?”

Hannah nodded. “For the first week of my conscious life, I was shown footage of the events of the Fall: a combination of newscasts and synesthetic recordings. It is standard procedure for all Nu Model angels.”

“W-what?”

“It is merely a cautionary measure. If we were not informed of the consequences, any individual angel could potentially go rogue.” The way Hannah spoke made the words sound rehearsed, regurgitated. “We must learn better, so we may better serve humankind.”

Charlotte didn’t feel like talking anymore. Didn’t feel like _eating_ anymore. She sent Hannah away and let her soup go cold and gummy, and when Hannah returned the next morning with breakfast they swept up the shattered remains of Charlotte’s wine carafe without a word.

But that afternoon, Hannah delivered lunch and took up their seat on the floor once more. Charlotte didn’t speak at first, merely eyed the angel over her salad wrap. She knew what Hannah was waiting for, and she knew that she had asked ( _ordered_ ) them to do it. But after what had happened the day before, she wasn’t sure she still wanted it. Maybe it was better to hide, better not to know, better to let herself rot away than to face what her world had become. Because of her.

She opened her mouth to tell Hannah to leave. What came out was, “Have you ever eaten before?”

They hadn’t, and it turned out they didn’t care for the experience.

“It feels,” they said, “like there’s a lump inside me. Is this permanent?”

Charlotte shook her head. “Your body’ll treat it like biofuel and convert it into reserve Grace. Neat, huh? That way you guys can eat if you wanna, or for energy in a pinch, but you don’t actually have to, y’know, take sh—uh, expel solid waste.”

Hannah made that constipated face again, and for once the expression was actually appropriate.

From then on, Hannah waited to talk each and every time they came to the penthouse. Asking questions, talking of nothing, attempting to placate a rattled Charlotte as best they could. Charlotte found it almost effortless, falling into a routine with Hannah—and after so long spent in isolation, that effortlessness itself was painfully foreign. Over the years she’d strived to distance herself from the Nu angels. She did nothing to aid in their design, production, or care that wasn’t demanded of her. She’d clung to passing Serviles in the abstract, never loving them the way she loved the archangels and the Pre-Falls but appreciating the constancy they’d brought to her life. But Hannah felt different, somehow. Hannah seemed to understand what it was Charlotte needed of them, and gave it to the best of their abilities. Hannah helped silence the chatter in her mind. Hannah almost felt like a friend.

Charlotte considered that that may have simply been a part of their programming—that she would’ve received the same treatment from any top of the line Servile. She dismissed the thought as too depressing to explore.

The days passed, marked by Hannah’s ins and outs. Then the weeks, and then for the first time in who knew how long Charlotte was able to say with reasonable certainty that a month had gone by.

Throughout that month, Hannah grew increasingly curious about human behaviour. It was a distant, anthropological sort of curious—the kind that prompted them to watch Charlotte with an unsettling intensity. The first time Charlotte had caught them doing it, she was in the middle of dinner. She lowered her forkful of food and shot Hannah a _look_ , one she’d borrowed from her mother’s bitchiest arsenal.

“Should I get you shit to take notes?” she snapped.

Hannah shook their head. “That would be unnecessary. My memory banks have ample storage.”

“Sarcasm, Hannah.” She’d taught them sarcasm only the day before. Applied, contemptuous irony, the angel had dubbed it.

“Oh.” Hannah cast their eyes down. “My apologies, Charlotte. I did not mean to offend.”

“N-no, it’s okay, it’s just… it’s just a little creepy when you stare, y’know?”

Hannah’s brows did a twisty sort of dance, and their mouth gave an abortive downward twitch. “No, I don’t know,” they said. “I find you… so very alien, Charlotte. Servile angels are intended to adapt according to the behaviours of those they serve, but I am stunted compared to others in the tower who were manufactured at the same time as me.” They fixed Charlotte with a look of their own, empty yet somehow terrified. “Is it possible that I am dysfunctional?”

An excellent question. Charlotte couldn’t say for sure without breaking Hannah open, but an inability to adequately absorb and mimic human behaviour could indicate some kind of software glitch.

And what would happen if that were true? An investigation into the rest of Hannah’s line, a prompt dissection, and whatever was left of Hannah the Servile recycled into waitstaff. Charlotte tried not to think about such things most of the time.

She shook her head. “Some models are behind the curve. Keep watching, you’ll pick it up eventually.”

Hannah did, in little ways—but it remained, as ever, a performance. They’d stare too long, smile too wide, stretch and squash their words in too-wrong ways. The few times Charlotte mentioned it, Hannah would go blank a moment, like their hardware was hiccoughing, before blinking and making a second and equally unsettling go of it. Charlotte learned to stuff the comments down after a while. But she couldn’t stuff the worry that writhed like worms in her gut whenever Hannah made a misstep. She tried to tell herself that the angel would get better, that nobody would notice this time.

_The Castiels’ stare is blue and doleful; the Ezekiels’ is cold and hard. Darbiel, Samax, Orphiel, and too many others to name, all in a single-file line to the slaughterhouse. Charlotte can’t stop them; it’s business, they’re broken._

She managed to keep it tamped down completely until the end of the month, when Raphael—the most “Cat’s in the Cradle” of her ungrateful android sons—made one of his rare visits to the penthouse.

His knock roused her—as per usual, she’d fallen asleep in her armchair instead of her bed, greasy with yesterday’s sweat and other drippings. She scrambled to her feet and made a futile attempt to straighten out her rumpled clothes.

“Co—” Her voice stuck on the dryness in her throat and she made rough, itchy work of hacking up a lung before attempting a second: “Come in!”

Charlotte had once likened the four archangels’ styles of movement to the four elements (in the neopagan sense). Michael was earth, grounded and silent and strong. Lucifer was fire, not in temperament but in elegance, all sharp swiftness and grace. Gabriel, ever changeable, oozed and crashed about like water.

And then Raphael. Raphael had been Charlotte’s finest accomplishment in terms of kinetic tech. He moved like something otherworldly, as delicate and subtle as smoke on the air. Watching him was mesmerizing—so much so that Charlotte caught herself staring even now, as he glided into the penthouse so smooth it hardly looked like his feet touched the ground.

He was dressed in a crisp charcoal suit, a silver pin made of the interlocking letters _APkA_ gleaming in his lapel. He’d had gotten his hair lengthened since the last time Charlotte had seen him. It fell in a straightened sheen to his shoulders, all black silk framing dark skin and severe features.

“Hello, mother,” he said. His voice moved like he did, gentle and quiet. “How have you been?”

Charlotte felt something in her middle soften, like a knot had come undone. She smiled. “M’okay, Raph. How about you? Feels like it’s been forever, with you off working all the time.”

“It has been a long time.” Raphael allowed the corner of his mouth to curl up—the most he ever smiled these days, at least as far as Charlotte had seen. “Unfortunately, I’ve come here on business. Urgent business, mother.”

Swallowing her disappointment as best she could, Charlotte shrugged. “I figured.” _Should have, anyways._ “Wh-what’s up, kiddo?”

She sank back into the armchair and gestured to the second—less comfortable, but what did angels care?—chair she’d had Hannah bring up for themselves the week before. Raphael sat and continued to look grave.

“Before I begin,” he said, and Charlotte steeled herself against the question she knew was coming, “have you had any… Radio slip-ups recently?”

There it was. Charlotte dropped her gaze. “J-just one. Thought too loud at a Servile, n-no big deal, right?”

She glanced back up, and saw that Raphael had closed his eyes. “Mother, what I’m about to tell you involves sensitive information. The Agency can’t risk a possible leak if your mind is—”

“Look, Raph, I’m not un-unstable anymore, okay? And-and-and you know I can’t do mass broadcasts unless I’m really fucking _trying_.” Charlotte shook her head. “I c-can keep it secret. You don’t have to treat me like a kid, I’m-I’m not gonna… scream state secrets to the rabble or whatever.”

Raphael’s mouth tightened. “I suppose I don’t have a choice.” He sighed. “Full disclosure: this is off the record, and my transmitters are down. Equin won’t like me coming to you with this.”

Charlotte frowned, worry shooting sharp and cold in her gut. “Y-you’re not… breaking any rules or an-anything, are you? I can’t protect you, Raph, y-you know I can’t, I…”

Raphael leaned forward and placed a hand on Charlotte’s. His palm was cool, his touch awkward and tentative but grounding all the same. “I’m well within my rights,” he assured her. “But you know how they like to keep you out of things, especially peacekeeping issues. Once it’s done, it’s done; I just didn’t want them to stop me.”

It was almost endearing, the faith Raphael had in Equin’s sense of justice. Of course, Raphael headed an agency funded and largely controlled by a senate made up of Equin representatives, so Charlotte couldn’t begrudge him a little naïve bias.

She squeezed his hand. “Okay, good. So, the, uh, the thing?”

Raphael nodded and pulled back, and Charlotte tried not to care. “Yes, so. You’re aware that Gabriel was recently dispatched on a mission to investigate a potential threat in Bromley?”

Charlotte made a face. “Graphically aware, yeah.”

Raphael’s mouth twitched down, but he didn’t comment. Charlotte liked to think that the twitch meant something along the lines of _ah yes, my idiot brother with his ridiculous seduction methods. What an asshole, right, mom?_ , but with Raphael’s transmitter off she couldn’t be sure.

“And you’re also aware, I hope,” he went on, “of the rash of malfunctioning Border Militaries. The… Gadreel units, I believe.”

Charlotte stiffened. “Yes.”

“They’ve hit eight units down, so Equin wanted to issue a recall.” Raphael gave another curling half-smile. “I stopped them.”

Relief broke like a busted dam, and Charlotte returned the smile. “You saved the Gadreels?”

Raphael cocked his head. “Well, for the moment. The line has been compromised; they’ll be discontinued soon enough. But for now, they remain useful—Equin has found no evidence of a design flaw, which means they’ve been tampered with. And Gabriel’s intel has lent credence to the Agency’s working theory that someone has been tampering with something at the border. We want to monitor the Gadreels, see if we can determine whether the two cases are connected.” He leaned in slightly, eyes gleaming. “And I want you to be the one to monitor them.”

Charlotte sat up straight with a flat, “What.”

“We believe the Gadreels’ malfunction is being caused by altered Grace coding, and we need someone to isolate and track the problem,” Raphael said, lifting an eyebrow. “But the damage is… exquisitely subtle. Only a professional coder could’ve done it, which means I can’t trust any professional coders to fix it until we identify the culprit. I can trust _you_ , Mother.”

The world was void around them, warping like a funhouse mirror, and Charlotte was going to choke on thin air. Her fingers coiled around the folds of her pant leg. “Y-you w-w-want me to _work_ for you?”

“Only temporarily.” His words twisted themselves in her ear, all faraway and underwater. “We have a safehouse in Bromley set up for you. Your presence there would not be made public, you’d be protected at all times, and if the mission goes longer than a month—though it shouldn’t—we’ll bring you back here for the next Surge. What do you say?”

 _No, no, so far, so far from home._ Charlotte hadn’t left the penthouse for more than a couple of hours at a time in years. Decades. Suspended somewhere in the back of her mind, a little girl desperate to see the world twitched to life. Meanwhile, something blacker lowered a heavy foot to her neck and pressed down hard, because there was no way Charlotte could do this.

She’d be working closely with a line of angels doomed to die. She’d be responsible for weeding out a terrorist threat. All of that, and faced alone, and Charlotte felt so small and weak as she tried to make herself say _no_. This was the first time in a long time that Raphael had come to see her, and she was going to refuse his one request. Turn him away, give him one more reason not to come back. He _trusted_ her. Raphael trusted her and she was about to let him down.

 _The Castiels trusted you, the Ezekiels too. You are their god, their mother, their everything, and they trusted you. The Gadreels march to their deaths for someone else’s mistake, and you can either sit back and watch or stand up and help them march faster. You are their Creator, and_ —

Hannah. If she left, she’d be leaving Hannah. And Hannah was in the same danger as the Gadreels if anybody caught on to their faulty mimicry. Charlotte gritted her teeth, tried to still her shaking hands as an idea bubbled to the front of her brain.

“I-I-I have one, uh, one c-condition,” she said. Her voice was too thin, too high.

Raphael perked up—well, as much as Raphael ever did. “And that is?”

“I’ll, um, I’ll need—there’s a Servile, Hannah, th-they wait on me. I-I want them. W-wanna…” She swallowed. This was the ugly part. “I want to b-buy them. And take them with me to Bromley.”

 _Buy_ Hannah, because to Eden and Equin and even to Raphael, Hannah was nothing but an object to be bought and sold. But it was the only way for Charlotte to secure Hannah’s safety. And this way Charlotte could make Raphael happy, do as he asked and go to Bromley. It’d be easier with Hannah by her side—and if Equin still owned Hannah, having them there would be impossible.

Raphael nodded, smiled his little smile. “Consider it done. Thank you, Mother.” He stood, and the action seemed to punctuate Charlotte’s decision. This was final, this was happening. God, it was actually happening. “I think this will be a good experience for you—getting out of the house.”

“Hey, now,” Charlotte said, and stood with him. “You keep talking like that, y-you’re gonna make me sound like some kind of recluse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here blossoms the second romance of the fic. Also! Raphael!
> 
> Fun fact: When coming up with Charlotte's backstory, I took Chuck's line in season... 4? About how his dad was gay and decided I was gonna find a way to make it HURT.


	6. Fairy Tales

Bromley’s Archive was three storeys of black glass climbing out of a first floor façade of stonework and jaundiced brick. The inside was kept cool for the sake of the archports that filled it—rows of faux-wood cubicles housing data-access touchscreens. A glowing monitor in the foyer featured a map and a storeyed breakdown of the building:

_Ground Floor – Public Ports_

_2 nd Floor – Specialized Ports/Private Rooms_

_3 rd-4th Floor – Library [RESTRICTED ACCESS]_

_Inquire at the Front Desk about membership, booking rooms, and Library access._

The desk in question was manned by a narrow, middle-aged woman with ruddy skin and curly green hair. She trailed Gabriel’s approach with heavy, hazy eyes, an unshed sigh gathered in the set of her shoulders. Her smile was broad, crinkling her crow’s feet. She was Under, or pretending to be.

“Hel-lo there,” Gabriel sang, leaning forward with an elbow planted on the desk. “I’m here to, uh,” he gestured at the monitor, “inquire about Library access.”

“No problem.” The woman’s voice was even and slow, like a honey drip. “Access is members only, and requires the supervision of one of our many qualified librarians or assistants. You a member, sir?”

“Yeah, I am.” He drew his card out of his pocket. Once it had been scanned, approved, and returned, he went on. “I was wondering… is it possible to request a supervisor?”

She cocked her head, all vague, serene confusion. Okay, probably not pretending to be Under. “Well, like I said, supervision is required—”

“No, I mean request a _specific_ supervisor.” Gabriel slipped a hand into his pocket, thumbed the wad of notes stuffed there and slid out a twenty-shekel. “I want Sam Winchester; I know he’s working today.”

The woman took the twenty, blinking dully at it. Gabriel suppressed the urge to roll his eyes—bribery went so much quicker when the target wasn’t all mellowed out.

After a small eternity, she pocketed the money. Her lips drew back in a slow spread of teeth, and she tapped a panel on the desk.

“Sam, report to the Front Desk please.”

There was a pause. Then a tinny knock echoing out of the panel, signaling that the request was acknowledged. Gabriel winked at the woman. “Thanks.”

He swung around and leaned against the desk, back to his bribee. A minute or two later, Gabriel heard a familiar voice behind him. “Hey, Layla, what’s up—?”

Gabriel turned and flashed a strategic dimple. “Sam? Is that you?”

Sam stopped. He stared owlishly at Gabriel a moment before clearing his throat. “Uh, hi. What’re you… what’re you doing here?”

“Oh, just thought I’d drop in and do a little recreational research.” Gabriel slunk around the desk, trailing a finger over the surface. “I had no idea you’d be here!”

“I’m pretty sure I told you where I work.”

“… _Today_. Jeez, let a guy finish his sentences, would you?”

Sam’s mouth twisted. The woman at the desk—Layla—was looking between them with that same dopey little smile. “This man wants to access the Library,” she said.

Anger flashed in Sam’s eyes, and Gabriel couldn’t help a twinge of satisfaction at that. Sure, it wasn’t what he was hoping for, but any sort of emotional response at this stage was good. At least Sam was still invested in Gabriel. That meant there was still something to manipulate.

“Fine,” Sam said, as close to a snap as he could politely get, and turned on his heel without indicating that Gabriel should follow him.

They walked the aisle between the archports to an elevator door at the back end of the building. Sam inputted a tap pattern on a panel on the wall, scanned a keycard against it, and behind the door came the whir of the approaching elevator.

The wait was painfully, awkwardly silent, and the ride up would probably be more of the same. Gabriel couldn’t have that.

“I didn’t know you were working today, honest to God,” he lied.

“Of course you didn’t. But you hoped.”

“I figured it wouldn’t be… unpleasant to run into you.”

The door slid open with a soft _fwish_ of escaped air. Sam eyed Gabriel pointedly as they stepped inside the elevator, and Gabriel held up his hands in defense. “Hey, you’re the one who said you wouldn’t mind a little in and out.”

“Not when I’m at work, Gabe.”

“I said I didn’t know you’d be here! I’m here to learn, Sam—this is nothing but freak happenstance. If you wanna blame someone, blame destiny.”

“Right.” Sam shot Gabriel an acidic little smile. “That’s why Layla only called _me_ down. Because of destiny.”

The elevator dinged their arrival at the third floor. “You mean you’re not the only assistant on shift?” Gabriel asked through his creeping grin as they disembarked.

“What was wrong with just running into me at the _Glass_?”

“You don’t think I might just care about my education?”

Sam made a face. “I don’t think much about you at all.”

“Ouch. See, here I was thinking you really, really liked me.”

Another face, and Gabriel’s grin widened. Sam gave a great, heaving sigh. “So. You’re here to learn? What’re you here to learn _about_?”

The Library smelled like steel and stale air, and its opaque black glass walls had a peculiar inward glow that seemed to singe the light. It was set up like a sprawling forest of shelves, tables, and display cases; Gabriel spotted two of Sam’s coworkers darting through the thickets. The two floors of Library were home to an array of Pre-Fall media—everything from ancient newspapers to back-up hard drives. Bromley was a small town, so its Library collection was small and largely insignificant. Most of the data had been reformatted and stored in the archports’ memory banks, or considered too mundane to preserve digitally. The only people who would give such a trifling collection a second glance these days were cultural historians and nerds.

Gabriel had only known twenty-odd years of Pre-Fall life. But he remembered enough to miss it. Enough to appreciate the efforts of Archive Libraries to save every scrap of material they could scrounge up, and enough to respect the fact that, over a century Post-Fall, these scraps were some of the last remaining windows into humanity’s all-but obliterated past.

He turned wide eyes on Sam. “Got any porn?”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I came across something the other day while reading—the arcane concept of _bukakke_.”

“You’re _kidding_ me.”

“You’re right, I’m kidding; I know what bukakke is. Ooh, but what’s that?”

Gabriel darted forward to the closest display table, which was currently laden with a collection of shrink-wrapped paperbacks. He picked one up—the cover sported a woman from the chin down, her lipsticked smirk bloody and stark above a pale neck and cascading lilac dressing gown.

“ _Romancing the Phantom_ , by Zelda Prinn.” He gave a low whistle. “Now this is _bound_ to have some porn in it.”

He turned it over, but before he could begin reading the back Sam had snatched the book out of his hand.

“Don’t touch these,” Sam snapped, replacing Zelda Prinn. “Didn’t the plastic tip you off?”

“Actually, the plastic implies you’re protecting the books from oily hands, which implies they _are_ expected to be touched. Check and mate.”

Sam, Gabriel noted with glee, had to visibly throttle back a smile at that. “I’m here to supervise you, not to hold your hand. You have to tell me what you wanna see, Gabe.”

“Not so eager to get rid of me after all, huh?”

“Don’t push it.”

Gabriel laughed, and thought a moment. _What do I miss?_ “What’s your area of expertise?”

When Sam didn’t answer right away—simply gave another sour look—he let his eyes drop back down to the romance novels. Some Gabriel recognized, many fondly. Some looked so cheap and obscure he had to wonder whether even their authors had guessed that these would be some of the last surviving texts of the twentieth century.

 _Prinn’s_ Romancing the Phantom _—archeological find of the decade._

He fingered the edges of a novel he remembered reading quite vividly—Charlotte had given him a copy to test whether the angels could experience arousal through fantasy, without being stimulated by touch. They couldn’t, but Gabriel had enjoyed the story and gotten several creative ideas, many of which he’d put to the test over the decades.

The plastic squeaked a protest at the trail of his fingers, and he pulled his hand away, still smiling fondly down at the book.

Sam sighed. “Pre-Fall myth.”

“Hm? You mean like fairy tales and shit?”

“Fairy tales, popular narrative trends…” He shrugged. “It mostly involves watching a lot of old movies. But I like picking out the patterns—sort of like solving a puzzle without all the pieces.” If Gabriel didn’t know better, he would swear Sam was blushing. “It’s fun.”

Gabriel took a few steps forward, until he was close enough to provoke Sam into lifting his gaze. When he did, Gabriel waggled his eyebrows and brandished the handheld tablet he’d had tucked away in his jacket. “Sounds it,” he said. “Wanna show me?”

 

They spent the next few hours poring over Sam’s notes, full to the margins with research and thoughts. Sam took him through catalogues of old books, films, video games—even let Gabriel watch a few film clips on an archport retrofitted to play older data formats. Which, of course, led to Gabriel convincing Sam to let them both sit through the entirety of _Dirty Dancing_. And, consequently, to Gabriel humming “Hungry Eyes” for hours on end.

For the good of the mission.

Sam warmed as the day wore on. Gabriel learned to recognize the way he lit up when he started talking about subjects he found truly exciting. His hazel eyes sparked brighter, like something in him was coming to sudden and vibrant life. Gabriel chased that, following trains of thought that Sam seemed to enjoy, actually taking notes on the tablet he’d brought and only interrupting with sarcastic commentary when he knew said commentary would be taken as charming rather than irritating. He didn’t have to fake his own interest—it was entertaining to see the ways in which the Fall had twisted humanity’s sense of history. More than that, it was entertaining to watch Sam’s dimples deepen as Gabriel’s breach of one-night stand etiquette was gradually forgotten.

By the time Sam’s shift ended, Gabriel had no more information for Raphael but plenty on the storytelling trends of the 1980s. He was jotting down Sam’s recommended titles on his tablet when one of the other assistants, a crisp and aesthetically bland young man, came strutting over. The assistant put a hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“Shift’s over, Winchester,” he said. Glanced up and gave Gabriel a nod. “The Library’s closing, sir, but if you’d like to use one of the downstairs ports…”

Gabriel tucked his stylus into its slot on the tablet, matching Crispy’s mild expression. “No need, I’ve got what I came for.” He winked at Sam, who failed to stop his creeping smile this time.

“Thanks, Brady,” Sam said. “I’ll see Gabe out.”

Brady. Brady, who Sam had mentioned the other day at dinner—with whom Sam had shared a torrid night of passion or two, judging from the way Sam had spoken of him. Brady, whose lips were peeling back from pearly teeth, his mouth all edges as his eyes frosted over.

“So this is Gabe?” The words were clipped and bitten out. Gabriel felt a small surge of delight—jealousy was too much fun to exploit. “One-night stand Gabe?”

Sam’s eyes widened. “Brady, _what the fuck_ ,” he hissed, looking equal parts furious and horrified.

“What? He knows what he is, Sam, he was there.” _Why shouldn’t I put him in his place_ sat unspoken in the chilly set of his jaw.

“That’s right, I was,” Gabriel said cheerily. “And since I was there, I can tell you that my full name is one-dinner, one-night, one-morning, and most-of-today stand Gabe. Y’know, since I don’t define my relationships by the number of times we’ve had sex. Four.”

Sam turned his glare on Gabriel, though it had softened from _livid_ to _beleaguered_ by the time it landed. Gabriel took that as a good sign, and shrugged. “He looked curious.”

Brady’s expression, meanwhile, had twisted into a toothy simian challenge still trying to disguise itself as a polite grin. “Noble of you. It’s a damn shame Sam’s shift’s over; now that he’s not getting paid to talk to you I expect you’ll be heading—”

“To dinner with me.” Sam stood, and at his full height he towered over Brady—an effective assistant in staring him down. “Aren’t you, Gabe?”

“Damn right I am.” Gabriel was only disappointed that Sam had stepped in before he’d had a chance to make Brady swallow his pretty smirk.

The two of them left without another look back, Sam only pausing to plug his punch-out code into the touch-panel by the elevators. They waited for the lift in complete silence and rode down in the same, but Gabriel didn’t break it. This silence felt different than the one they’d shared earlier that day. Warmer, somehow, and gentler.

On the front steps of the building, Sam stopped Gabriel with a hand on his arm.

“I’m sorry about Brady. He… we used to be a thing.” Sam looked embarrassed, so Gabriel decided not to tell him he’d already assumed as much. “Not a _big_ thing, we only…” He shook his head. “Anyway, I’m sorry. He’s an asshole.”

Gabriel waved a hand. “I’ve met bigger assholes. Though judging by how tightly-wound that kid is, I’d guess that isn’t saying much.”

Sam laughed openly for the first time that day, and Gabriel felt a little more secure in asking his next question.

“So, at the risk of shooting myself in the foot here, was that—”

Sam nodded, his expression softening. “That was a real invitation to dinner, yeah.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t let this turn into something? Change your mind, or am I just that resistible?”

“Uh...” Sam’s gaze fell to his feet. “Neither. I still can’t… let this go too far. But I like you. I like spending time with you, I don’t want to stop.” He glanced up again, and his smile was almost shy. “It’s probably really stupid, but I’m stupid sometimes.”

For a moment, Gabriel hated himself. Then he smiled. “Based on today I’d say it’s the opposite, kiddo. Don’t worry, we’ll take it slow.”

“You’ve already had my dick in your mouth.”

“From this moment on we’ll take it slow.”

 

Dinner went smoothly, as did lunch-break coffee the following day (Gabriel’s treat), and another dinner two days after that. Gabriel slipped himself into Sam’s routine in easy increments, which, upon reflection, was quite the feat. Sam didn’t seem to have many friends—there was Brady and his other coworkers, and presumably Bradbury at the border. But other than that, he appeared to be alone. He dropped a few names here and there over meals, but never referred to them as more than “people he knew”. From what Gabriel had gleaned from recon and their time together, Sam’s trips to the border were the only noteworthy things he did; everything else was a monotony of work, dinner, and home. For Gabriel to find a place in that monotony so quickly… He was almost flattered.

Sam didn’t seem to _want_ him to be flattered. Sam was still holding back, pulling out of too-warm smiles and too-long looks, swallowing anything that would bring their conversation too close to tender. The funny thing was, Gabriel didn’t need their relationship to be romantic for the mission to work—he had to get close to Sam, not necessarily inside him. He’d only gunned for seduction because he’d found that sex and romance tended to make humans stupider. Irrational and attached and overeager to spill their guts to the archangel of their dreams. Friendships could glean the same results, of course, but seduction was usually easier, and so much more fun.

Gabriel could complete the mission in Platonic Mode; he’d done it before. Still, he loved the way Sam looked at him when he thought Gabriel couldn’t see.

About a week after the Library incident, Gabriel bought groceries. Two hours before they were supposed to meet up to eat, Gabriel tapped the apartment buzzcode on the panel by Sam’s front door and brandished his food bins for the security camera-light.

“I come bearing gifts.”

“Gabe? What’re you doing here?” Sam’s voice was tinny and crackly through the panel. Over a century and the development of sophisticated AI later, and humanity still hadn’t managed to smooth out that particular bug.

“So ungrateful, Sam-a-lam. I thought we’d eat in tonight. And that’s not a decision I made lightly, considering how much I love eating o—”

Sam hung up, and the light flashed off. Gabriel cackled to himself as, thirty-odd seconds later, the door swung open to reveal a grinning Sam.

“You brought food!” He took one of the bins, eyes widening as they raked over the contents. “This is way too much for one meal, man.”

“Figured this should last you a while, save you a few shekels.” Gabriel shrugged. “Maybe branch out, try something that’s not a sandwich and a side salad.”

Sam’s smile drooped, a by now familiar crease appearing between his brows. “You… bought me groceries?”

“Just a few staples. Nothing—”

“I can’t accept this, Gabe.”

Gabriel froze. Sam was staring at the bin in his hands, openly frowning now. His jaw was set and his hands were—barely, but Gabriel could still see it—trembling. He shook his head. “It’s too much, it’s one thing for you to pay for a meal, but…”

“Consider this an advance.” Gabriel thought he knew why Sam was hesitant, so he took a chance. “On the meals I _would’ve_ paid for, I mean. This isn’t charity, Sam. This is me taking advantage of my parents’ Servus Dei money and squandering it on a cute guy who isn’t even sleeping with me.” Sam looked up, and Gabriel winked. “Anymore.”

A long pause, then Sam sighed. “We look after our own,” he said, and it almost sounded like he was telling himself. “My family. We stick together, and we don’t get help when we can do for ourselves. Everybody else comes second—Equin and the Servus Dei don’t even factor in.” He wet his lips. Then he met Gabriel’s eye and smiled, carefully, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to do it. “I guess eating food bought with their money counts as a big enough _fuck you_.”

Gabriel smiled back, and didn’t point out that Sam still spoke of an ostensibly dead family in the present tense. He did, however, file that intel away as he helped Sam haul the groceries upstairs—sometimes grief was just grief, and sometimes lonely boys hid secrets. PRA Dean Winchester was far from a _Confirmed Deceased_ status, after all.

An hour later, Gabriel decided that it was a damn good thing he’d learned basic food preparation from Charlotte—it helped him keep up appearances undercover, and that night it helped him put something edible on the table. It appeared that the real reason Sam ate out all the time was because he was a terrible fucking cook.

“No, okay, see, this is why I said to put oil in the water.” He grimaced as he hauled a clump of stuck-together noodles from the pot, speared on a serving spoon.

Sam hunched his shoulders. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“It’s okay. That’s why I brought the dish, now we can just plop this lumpy crap down,” he transferred the clump into a flat glass dish, “and cut it up and mix in all that shit I just chopped, and we’ll bake it. Boom… some noodle thing.” _Charlotte would’ve added wine._

“You sound like my brother.” Sam smiled as Gabriel began breaking up the noodles. “His specialty was whatever-we-had-in-the-cooler casserole. Somehow he always made it taste good.”

Gabriel snorted softly. “A man after my own heart. He looked after you, then, huh?”

“Yeah. Mom died when I was a baby, and Dad wasn’t always around. He supported us, but that meant he had to be away a lot.”

“And that was where Dean came in. Sorry, pass me the veggies?”

Sam did, and nodded. “Exactly. He more or less kept house until I was old enough to help out.” He got quiet a moment, then—“When Dad died, Dean took it hardest. I didn’t really… I mean, I _cared_ , but Dean was more of a father to me than he was. We… kinda grew apart after that.”

The casserole was all-but ready for the oven—Gabriel set about grating some cheese on top. “How long before was that?” he asked. “How long before Dean died, I mean.”

Sam shrugged. “Just under two years.”

“Fucking _hell_.”

Watching Sam curl into himself was about as heartbreaking as Gabriel could’ve imagined. “S’fine. It’s been ages. I’ve dealt with it, I’m still here, I’m fine.”

Gabriel stared at the casserole. “But you miss them,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t matter if you grew apart. They were your family, and you loved them.”

_Lucifer and Michael with their hands at each other’s throats, mechanical wings whirring and clicking as they grapple. Only the first few layers of archangel skin bleed—and oh, they are so bloody. They’re screaming, high and feral. Below them, humans do the same as they scramble for safety from Lucifer’s followers, protected by Michael’s. Charlotte is coding the border, but the city already stinks of blood._

_Lucifer and Michael flying into the distance, discharge of Grace blasting apart the skyline. And Gabriel and Raphael alone, watching their brothers leave for the last time._

 

“You’ll always love them,” Gabriel told the noodles.

“Yeah,” Sam told his hands. “I will.”

 

Nothing happened that night, but sometime between preparing dinner and falling asleep on the living room couch, Sam’s hand found Gabriel’s.

 

A week later, they met up for lunch on Sam’s break. They went to the same place every time—a tiny café crafted from an old residential building that was oddly pretentious for a border town coffee shop. The owner, a woman named Sera Seige, had had the interior gutted and remodeled to look like the lovechild of a Gothic church and a Spaghetti Western saloon, and the menu was written in a hodgepodge of bastardized French. (One natural side effect of Eden being largely made up of ex-Canada was a metric ton of lingering French.) Its name, _Grain de Café,_ was written above the door in stylized wrought iron that must’ve cost Seige a fortune. But the food was good and the coffee was good—Eden’s coffee-bean greenhouses were yielding excellent crops that year.

Gabriel met Sam on the steps of the Archive, and they made their way to the shop together. Sam was laughing as they crossed the threshold, but abruptly stopped as he took in his surroundings. Gabriel found himself shutting up too, momentarily paralyzed by the sight of a Servile angel behind the counter.

It was a commercial model, a Samandriel—fairly common in city shops, as rare as pure gold in places like Bromley. They were male-featured but soft, baby-faced and big-eyed and just about the friendliest models Equin produced.

Sam was glaring at the Samandriel in _Grain de Café_ like he wanted it dead.

Seige was behind the counter too, inspecting a coffee machine. She glanced up the moment Sam and Gabriel entered the shop, and, seemingly oblivious to Sam’s expression, waved them over with a wide grin.

“Hey, boys,” she said, tucking a fringe of dyed-white bangs behind her ear. “Look what just got shipped in!”

She adjusted the Samandriel’s cheap blond wig and patted their head. The angel wrinkled their nose. “Thank you, Ms. Seige. How can I help you, gentlemen?”

Sam took an audible, angry breath, but said nothing. The Samandriel just stared at him.

“Uh,” Gabriel caught the angel’s eye, “two cappuccinos, half a dozen éclairs and an egg salad sandwich, please.”

“Absolutely, sir, coming right up.” The Samandriel smiled, as sunny and charming as any other in his line. Luckily, Gabriel’s face wasn’t well known among the commercial models—hell, among any angels save those at the Equin Tower—so he knew he wouldn’t be recognized.

Gabriel put a hand on Sam’s arm, which twitched under his touch. “Wanna sit down, kiddo? I’ll bring the food.”

Sam nodded, still looking vaguely murderous, and found them a table. When he was out of earshot, Seige leaned towards Gabriel with a bitter smile.

“He’ll call me tarred for this,” she murmured. “Half my clientele has already. People around here are so close-minded it’s ridiculous—but you’re not _from_ around here, are you? You get it. It’s about time this town got a little more sophisticated.”

Gabriel studied her face a moment—took in the mingled glee and terror hiding in her wide eyes and twitching mouth. He was peripherally aware of the rest of _Grain de Café_ ’s patrons, sitting stiffbacked and muttering to each other. The Samandriel smiled serenely as they made Sam and Gabriel’s cappuccinos, unaware or at least unaffected. Fresh off the factory line and dumb as a post.

Gabriel shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

He only had to wait a moment more, then he was hustling a tray-full of lunch and coffee over to the table Sam had found them. Sam was more on-edge than Gabriel had ever seen him, even more so than the first night they’d met. Something in the tight lines of his body screamed _danger_ —like pulled elastic about to snap, like an angry animal begging to be provoked.

“Wanna talk about it?” Gabriel asked, because life as an overpowerful android had taught him to ignore his pre-programmed self-preservation instinct.

Sam clenched his teeth so hard Gabriel heard them grind. “She brought one in. I can’t believe she actually…” He scowled at the tray. “And she made it make our coffee.”

“Well, technically the machine made our coffee.”

“What’s the difference?” Sam sighed. “Equin’s _here_ , it’s slipping in, and we can’t get away from it. You remember what happened in Kelston?”

Gabriel did. Kelston was a border town down south—much like Bromley, it had been allowed to live with minimal attention from Equin for over a century. No angels but the border guards, very few people Under, the locals spitting _tarred_ like a curse. They did for themselves, they lived in relative peace. Then, fifteen years ago, the Angelic Peacekeeping Agency got wind of the growing anti-Equin sentiment and sent in a truckload of Serviles, hoping that demonstrating the benefits of angels would help defuse the situation. It had worked before, in the cities—no reason why it couldn’t work again.

Within a week, the frequencies of all the Serviles were shut off. Of course, turning off their ‘bot’s transmission capabilities was the right of every angel’s human owner, but an en masse blackout seemed suspicious. APkA sent in a couple of undercover Pre-Falls to assess the damage and found that the living angels were being treated like trash. Several had been stripped for parts. Others had been tied up by local kids and stoned until their Halos shattered. Still more were shut off and stuffed in closets and car trunks, walking around covered in graffiti, or with chunks of flesh torn off to expose their wires and metal bones. The humans were careful to keep them all indoors and within the city limits, so the border guards wouldn’t see. Raphael was horrified; even if the Servus Dei and urbanites treated angels like talking coffeepots, at least they respected their property.

The Serviles were extracted. A handful of suspect locals were taken too—for questioning, the guards said, but they never came back. Gabriel remembered stepping on a couple of their bloody teeth after the Castiels were done with them. ( _Cru-u-u-nch and click against the floor._ ) Once it was determined that the rest of the town wasn’t actually plotting a rebellion, Raphael gave the order to put them Under.

Now, Kelston was little more than a ghost town, the reintegrated angelic population doing most of the hard labour while their humans shuffled through mindless day jobs. Wake, take your pills, follow the bells until bed. Gabriel hadn’t fought the decision—when all was said and done, he wasn’t sure whether he was more disgusted with the people or his brother.

He nodded. “I remember Kelston.”

Sam’s knuckles were white on the tabletop. “I’ll die before I let them do that to me.”

Gabriel put a hand on his and squeezed. Sam looked up, and Gabriel let his eyes go hard. “They won’t,” he said. “I promise you, Sam, they won’t.”

They didn’t go back to _Grain de Café_ after that. Gabriel didn’t let himself touch Sam again for a couple of days, either. He was used to lying, but he didn’t think he could tell that lie again without choking on it.

 

“I wanna show you something.”

They were curled up on Sam’s couch after dinner, Gabriel’s legs in Sam’s lap as they watched something mindless on TV that neither of them were really paying attention to. It had been over a month since Gabriel had approached Sam at the Archive—though they hadn’t kissed since the morning after they’d met, between the aftermath of _Grain de Café_ and here they’d slowly begun touching more. Sam didn’t like to initiate contact outside of rare small, unspoken moments. But once Gabriel noticed an increase in those, he began pushing at the boundaries. Clasped hands every now and again became a hug every time they met became Gabriel draping himself across Sam whenever they were relaxing together. Sam still didn’t initiate more than the occasional pat or squeeze. Still, he never stopped Gabriel, and if his contented smiles were anything to go by, he was enjoying himself.

In response to Sam’s declaration, Gabriel offered a questioning hum.

“It’s…” Sam’s voice curled around his smile. “It’s kinda stupid. But I think you’ll like it.”

“Probably. I’m a big fan of stupid.”

“It means getting up and going for a walk.”

“Eh. Less of a fan.”

“C’mon, Gabe.” Sam nudged his shins, his damn puppy eyes on high. “For me?”

Gabriel grinned and swung his legs down. “Well, how could I say no?”

The two of them got on their shoes and coats and headed out the door, Sam tucking a flashlight into the inner pocket of his jacket. “For when the sun goes down,” he said, and smiled like he knew something Gabriel didn’t. Which, of course, was the case.

He led Gabriel down a narrow, winding back road towards the city limits. For a moment, Gabriel thought he was going to lead him to Bradbury’s outpost. And for a moment, Gabriel wanted to pull him back, stop him from giving him the evidence he needed, from ending this too soon.

_What the fuck is wrong with me?_

He needn’t have worried, as it happened. Sam led him to the scrub beyond the town limits, but not in the direction of the border. They followed the road as it cut through the low hills, as the scrubland gave gradual way to pine trees and the hills on one side to the rising feet of the surrounding mountains. The sun was setting before them, painting the sky, leaving them in valley-chill and tugging their jackets closer—Sam for the cold, Gabriel for show. The drone of the cicadas was joined and eventually replaced by the sound of rushing water, and at long last Sam stopped at a gap in the treeline, at the crest of a dusty path to a now-visible river’s edge.

Gabriel realized that they hadn’t spoken since they’d left the house. He realized that he hadn’t once felt the need to speak.

“Down there.” Sam gestured down the path. It led to a sandy patch of riverbank, shaded by trees. The water moved sluggishly around a couple of large, flat stones in the middle—on the far bank, another beachy area climbed into a tall, knobby rock. The last rays of the sun lit it up gold. “Me and Dean used to come here a lot in the summer. This is the slowest part of the river, and the deepest.” He smiled. “We swam across and took turns diving off that rock.”

“It’s gorgeous,” Gabriel said, and meant it.

“Isn’t it?” Sam set his shoulders. “C’mon, let’s sit a while.”

They followed the path and plopped down in the sand, resting with their backs up against a beached log. Silence settled over them again, and with it an ethereal sort of peace. The riverbank was secluded enough that the light pollution from Bromley wasn’t an issue, so as the sun slipped farther away the stars— _all_ the stars—began to peek out. Gabriel gazed up at them and felt a pang of nostalgic longing for something he wasn’t sure he’d ever had. Something he couldn’t even begin to describe.

Sam pressed up closer to him until their legs were almost twined together. “Cold,” he muttered.

Gabriel reached for Sam’s hand, rubbing it gently between his. “Good thing you brought a space heater.”

Sam laughed quietly. “I’ve come here alone, since Dean died,” he said after a minute. “Not often. It hurts too much, usually.”

“But you brought me.”

“I did.” He met Gabriel’s gaze and smiled. “It doesn’t hurt with you, somehow.”

This time when Sam kissed him, Gabriel took care to be gentle. Sam opened to him eagerly, and he seemed ready to roughen it, but Gabriel didn’t let him. He kept it slow, eased Sam onto his back and lay atop him so he could mouth his way to the crook of Sam’s neck. Breathed in the scent of him ( _pine and shampoo and sweat and Sam Sam Sam_ ), and found what he was longing for. He wanted this to be _simple_ , to be one man falling for another on a riverside beach. Just for a night, he wanted to be human.

“God,” Sam sighed, “I still want you, Gabe. I want you so bad.”

“Me too,” Gabriel murmured against the skin of his throat. “Sam…”

“Mmm…” Sam brought a hand to the back of his neck, ran his fingers through Gabriel’s curls. Gabriel raised his head and kissed him again. Deeper, this time.

He splayed his hand across Sam’s chest, over his heart, and wished things could have been different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double whammy chapters this week, because I love this one :P 
> 
> Fun fact: And here's Bromley Rock, the real-life provincial park (I think I said national last time, oops) I mentioned in the notes a couple of chapters ago. You can google it and find some photos to set the scene for that final vignette if you'd like! The swimming there is gorgeous.


	7. Down the Waterslide

Charlotte bled over Grace the morning she departed for Bromley. After taking her leave of the Chairs—and boy, was that a great feeling—she received Raphael at the penthouse. He came with one of his Pre-Falls in tow, a handsome, dusky-skinned model whom Raphael introduced as Levi.

“Levi will be your aid and driver for this assignment,” Raphael said. “Now, it’s extremely important to Gabriel’s mission that we don’t send you into the town itself, so as not to invite suspicion. Your safehouse is within one of the Border Military barracks—you are not to leave the barracks under any but the most extreme circumstances. Levi knows the protocol, and you will defer to him in the event of an emergency. Same rules apply to your accompanying Servile. Is that clear, Mother?”

“I—yeah, it’s clear.” Charlotte’s gaze flickered over Raphael’s shoulder to the closed bathroom door, behind which Hannah was being disguised for travel. It was a lot harder to make Nu Model angels appear human. There was always something wrong with the skin—too perfect—or in the eyes—too bright. But she was sure whatever the other Serviles came up would be serviceable for a road trip.

“I am honoured to have the opportunity to work with you, Artifex.” Levi smiled, and bowed his head.

Charlotte hunched her shoulders. “Uh, th-thanks.”

Raphael raised an eyebrow. “Mother is… uncomfortable with reverence,” he said. Charlotte shot him a dirty look.

“Changing the subject,” she snapped, “is there any way I could see Gabriel? While I’m there? H-he can sneak out of town, right, take a break? It’s just… i-it’s been a while, and…”

“No. Even if it were permissible, Gabriel has turned off his receiver.” Raphael’s tone told Charlotte exactly how he felt about _that_. “You wouldn’t be able to contact him remotely, not without compromising him.”

Trying to swallow around her disappointment, Charlotte nodded. “R-right. Okay.” She lowered her voice. “And… uh, speaking of which… d-did you get that, uh, that transmission last n-night?”

She couldn’t have been the only one to feel the sudden swell of _something_ on Gabriel’s frequency. Some snarled mess of feeling compounded with the skittering resistance of programming not quite overridden by the archangels’ techno-neuroplasticity. Charlotte didn’t know the context, but she knew pain. She knew heartache. And by the way Raphael’s back straightened at her question, he knew, too.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the details, but yes,” he said. Stiffly, even for him. “Regardless of what you’ve heard, Mother, rest assured that Gabriel is perfectly capable of fulfilling his assignment.”

Charlotte nodded and kept her response trapped behind her teeth. _That’s not what I fucking care about, Raph, and you know that_.

The door to the bathroom creaked open, and the two Serviles led Hannah forth. Both of them were identical to Hannah, though their bracers named them _Esther_ and _Rachel_ —or at least they would have been identical to Hannah thirty minutes ago. Hannah was dressed in muted colours, a loose-fitting dove grey tunic over tight, slate pants. They had on a pearly knit scarf to hide their bracer, a dark brown wig to hide their Halo. As they drew closer, Charlotte realized that they were wearing _makeup_ —a thick cake of foundation to disguise the synthetic purity of their skin.

They stopped, and peeked at Charlotte through the bangs of the wig. The effect made them look almost childishly shy.

“Do I look sufficiently human?” They weren’t broadcasting anything, but Charlotte still felt the fringes of their mind tremble. Whether it was from excitement or anxiety was anyone’s guess.

Charlotte nodded, gave a small smile. “You look great.”

Hannah smiled back, and it was crooked and stiff and off, but it was also unmistakably sincere. Raphael frowned vaguely at it—Charlotte cleared her throat, because even if her technical ownership of Hannah would protect the angel from being scrapped without going through a truckload of red tape first, it wouldn’t stop them from being deemed defective in the first place. An official recall—if it went that far—would render her license to Hannah void.

“So, uh, I’m all packed,” she said, a touch louder than necessary. “Sh-shouldn’t you be giving me a… a briefing, o-or something?”

“Not necessary; you already know your mission.” Raphael drew a tablet from inside his jacket pocket and held it out to Charlotte in a single, smooth motion. “This is equipped with the software necessary to automatically track the Gadreels’ Grace code streams. Levi will show you how to use it once you’re secure at the barracks.”

Charlotte held the tablet flush against her chest like a breastplate. “Then th-that’s it?”

“That’s it. Esther and Rachel, take the Artifex’s belongings to the parkade.”

The angels began to load Charlotte’s bags onto a trolley, and her legs began to go numb.

 

_Ten years old, and she’s in line for a waterslide. Steep drop, nearly ninety degrees, but she should be safe, right? Everyone walks away fine, right? She’s smiling until she’s next in line—and suddenly there’s no more buffer. Going over is not some vague future stunt that she can imagine she is brave enough to pull. It’s now. Now she isn’t sure._

_Steep drop, sheer drop, and she’s going over in a fucking innertube._

 

Charlotte gripped Hannah’s arm. _I don’t think I can do this._

CHARLOTTE, YOU ARE MORE THAN SKILLED ENOUGH TO ISOLATE THE DEFECT—

_No. No, I know I can do that; I’m not a mad scientist for nothing. I mean, I don’t think I can leave—I’m like Rapunzel, but, like, a thousand times less well-adjusted. You don’t get that reference, what am I talking about…_

THAT’S A CORRECT ASSUMPTION.

_The point is, I can’t leave. I can’t do it, Hannah, fuck, I can’t, I’ve gotta get off the fucking slide—_

“Mother.” Raphael was staring, frustration in the line of his back. “Levi and I will escort you to the car, when you’re ready.”

_—I didn’t go down, Daddy and Omar teased me on the way home but I just couldn’t do it—_

CHARLOTTE. CHARLOTTE, I BELIEVE DECORUM CALLS FOR YOU TO SAY SOMETHING BACK TO DIRECTOR RAPHAEL.

“Mother, are you ready to go?”

She was gaping like a fish, she realized. Mouth working around heavy breaths as if she were trying to swallow the air. The bags were gone, and they were waiting on her.

YOU CAN DO THIS.

Charlotte wet her lips. “Y-yeah, I’m ready.”

She held onto Hannah until well after they got into the car.

 

———

 

Gabriel and Sam didn’t have sex after the riverbank. On the riverbank, sure—Sam started it, begging into Gabriel’s mouth and fucking the curve of his hip—but by the time they got back to the apartment Sam was too exhausted to do any more. He led Gabriel up to his bedroom and peeled off his clothes before collapsing back onto the mattress in boxer shorts.

“Want I should I tuck you in?” Gabriel quipped, arms crossed. He should go, he should come back tomorrow, he should give Sam some space—he really shouldn’t pass up another opportunity to scan the apartment, but fuck it, he knew by now that Sam wasn’t stupid enough to bring damning evidence home with him.

“Want you should join me.” Sam was smiling, too tentative to show dimple, and no man that big had the right to look that vulnerable. “Please, Gabe?”

He wanted to ask, _is that such a great idea?_ He wanted to say, _I thought you knew not to get so involved_. He wanted to scream, _please don’t do this to me_.

But he was weak, and Sam was warm.

He did an inspection when he woke, and, as predicted, found nothing. Sam stirred a half hour later, moaning about work and morning bells and pulling Gabriel closer.

“You’ll come by for my lunch, right?” Sam murmured, voice muffled by Gabriel’s hair. “This past month wasn’t just some long-con so you could fuck me again and end things your way?”

“Even if it was, do you really think I’d stop at a dry-hump on a sandbank?” Gabriel rubbed a thumb against Sam’s wrist, smiling. “I’ll meet you at reception.”

Sam kissed his jaw. “Good.”

Gabriel spent the morning as he had grown accustomed during his time in Bromley—down by the border. He’d been scanning the area around Bradbury’s station from afar, looking for some kind of structural weakness in the coding, some sign of what Sam did when he was down there. So far he’d come up dry on both counts. Almost more frustrating, Sam hadn’t been back to the border since the first time Gabriel had followed him. He didn’t think it was because Sam suspected him—the way he talked about Equin, and especially after seeing his reaction to the Samandriel at _Grain de Café_ , Gabriel figured Sam would rather turn himself in than get intimate with one of their agents, let alone a ‘bot.

And wasn’t that a comforting thought.

By the time he had to leave to meet Sam, he was still infoless and beyond ready to just skip out and leave Bromley altogether. His desire to keep drawing out his mission and his preprogrammed need to fulfill that mission were duking it out and driving him out of his head—the only thing that kept him moving was his focus on getting to the Archive. And the knowledge that if he dwelt on it long enough, Raphael would consider his hesitation a threat to the operation and have him extracted.

Maybe he could trick an answer out of Sam. Ask him if he wanted to go to the border for a midnight rock-throwing competition and gauge his reaction.

Gabriel reached the Archive’s reception and bent himself over the desk, much to the vague amusement of a still-Under Layla.

“Hello, Gabe,” she said. “You shouldn’t do that.”

“What, languish?” Gabriel scooted forward on his belly and kicked his feet in the air. “I shan’t, I’m troubled. ‘Sides, who’s gonna stop me? You?”

“I’m stopping you right now, I’m telling you to stop.”

He sighed. “Layla, really, we should just grab a supply closet and do something about this belligerent sexual tension.”

“Please don’t.” Sam came to a stop beside the desk, lips flickering into a half-smile. “You okay there, Gabe?”

Gabriel wiggled his ass and put on his best Marilyn Monroe: “Just waitin’ for you, big boy.”

“You’re an idiot,” Sam laughed, and Gabriel slid off the desk with a grin, yearning for languishment all-but dissolved by the sound. Fuck, this was getting dangerous.

They left the building, heading for their new lunch spot—a _World Foods_ chain restaurant two doors down from _Grain de Café_. It claimed to carry the best of global Pre-Fall cuisine with a Post-Fall twist. Their specialties included baingan bharta (made with real eggplant!) and Shanghai beef (made with real eel!).

“Just so you know,” Sam said as they made their way, “I’m meeting a friend after dinner tonight, so you’ll be on your own.”

 _Oh._ Gabriel nodded, doing his best to silence the chorus of _not yet, not yet_ playing in his head. “Well damn, Sammy, leaving me in the lurch after another night of passion? What kind of girl do you think I am?”

“The kind who’s welcome to stop by afterward. I’ll be home late, but I can shoot you a comm if you don’t mind waiting up.”

Gabriel was quiet. Sam was almost certainly going to meet with Bradbury, which meant Gabriel would have to follow him, which meant the jig was closer to being up. He’d been on much longer assignments, Raphael wouldn’t begrudge him a few more months undercover—but if Sam made the slightest mistake tonight, he might not need a few more months. He couldn’t give Sam the chance to make that mistake. He _had_ to give Sam the chance to make that mistake.

Sam frowned at him. “You don’t have to come by if you don’t want to, I know it sounds like a…”

Gabriel snorted softly. “Like a booty call?”

“I… right. But it’s not, I swear, I just… I know I’ll want to see you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Sam smiled at his feet. “I usually do, when you aren’t there.”

Gabriel nudged him with his shoulder. “Me too, kiddo.”

Oh yeah, this was getting really, really dangerous.

Something crunched under Gabriel’s foot, and he thought nothing of it. Then they turned the last corner before the _World Foods_ —and stopped dead at the sight before them.

 

———

 

In the car, Charlotte covered her ears with a sharp scream.

 

———

 

The block between the _Grain de Café_ and where Sam and Gabriel stood was scattered with broken metal and smashed glass. Chunks of synthetic flesh, some still attached to synthetic muscle. A foot—a whole foot in its shoe, the ankle fizzing and crackling with frayed Grace.

Gabriel began to pick through it, his steps heavy as realization settled sick and oily behind his skin. As he passed six fingers that looked like they were torn from their hands, passed clumps of wig hair that looked like they’d been ripped apart with teeth.

Nu Angels didn’t bleed, and for that he was thankful.

He was dimly aware of Sam behind him as he reached the front of the _Café_ , as he came to a stop in front of a mess of wires spilling like guts from the battered remains of Sera Seige’s Samandriel. Their arms and legs were gone, hanging on ropes from the wrought iron letters on the storefront. Their eyes were gone too, probably somewhere in the wreckage behind them, but— _fuck_ —Gabriel could still make out the faint thrumming of their frequency. The poor thing was operational. They were _conscious_.

 

———

 

“Artifex, do we need to stop?”

“Charlotte? What is the matter?”

“F-fucking hell.” _God, it hurt, it hurt so much_. “Something’s happened, Hannah, Gabriel’s _really_ pissed.” _Nu Angels didn’t bleed_. “Oh, God…”

“What is it?”

“Somebody’s gonna fucking pay.”

 

———

 

TARRED BITCH

The words had been painted in red across one of the front windows of the _Café_ , under Samandriel’s dangling limbs. The other window had been destroyed—Gabriel glanced inside, but couldn’t see Seige. He crouched next to Samandriel’s head, fury and the sudden need to _break_ something coursing through him.

Whoever had done this hadn’t meant to leave the poor ‘bot functional. The injuries were raw and brutal and indiscriminate—the fact that Samandriel’s lips were still moving without a sound, the fact that they were still rocking their head from side to side on the pavement as if following something with eyes that were no longer there, was nothing but an unhappy accident.

Gabriel switched on his receiver. That was the worst part. The first second, that moment of too-loud too-fast as his head swelled with incoming data and a surge of crowding voices. Gabriel shut his eyes, pulled up all his missed memos from Naomi so they’d ping as received, not bothering to actually process the information as it was filed away. Then the tide ebbed. The roar dulled to a distant chatter, and Gabriel opened his eyes again, zeroing in on the Samandriel in front of him.

—NOT—CANNOT CAN-CAN-CANNOT SEE—MOVE CANNOT MOVE CANNOT—

 _I’m going to kill them, I’m gonna fucking kill them all, Samandriel, tell me who did this to you so I can tear them apart_.

—DO NOT RECOGNIZE—FREQUENCY, WHO IS—SPEAKING TO ME?

_I’m… not important. What happened to you?_

—PATRONS—PATRONS—GOOD MEN, MISS SERA SAID THEY WERE GOOD MEN GOOD FRIENDS—

_What did they look like? Samandriel, please, I can get you help._

“Is it still… on? Or is that just a… a twitch?”

Gabriel’s head snapped up at the sound of Sam’s voice. Just the other day Sam had looked at Samandriel as the harbinger of the fucking end times, but now he was peering down at the smashed angel with something almost like concern. For that alone, Gabriel was furious. _Not so easy to hate them when you actually see them broken, huh? Guess it was easy for these motherfuckers._

“They’re working,” he said, voice flat. “For a given value of the word.”

“They…” Sam gulped. “Can they feel any of it?”

Gabriel’s hand curled into a fist at his side. He opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, the Samandriel let out a faint noise.

“H-hurts,” they rasped. “Hurts, p-please, hurts…”

Gabriel set his jaw. “There you go.” Not as much as a human, not even as much as him, but enough to make this more than cruel—even to an anti-Artificialist.

Sam knew it. Gabriel could see that Sam knew it. He could see it in the way Sam’s frown deepened, the way he dropped to his knees and let large palms hover over Samandriel’s cracked torso, like he wanted to help but wasn’t sure which wound to tend to first.

“I thought…” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t know they could hurt.”

“I had one growing up, burned itself on an oven. They _screamed_ ,” Gabriel said quietly. (No need to tell Sam that had been him.) “I know I don’t like them, but...”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. I… yeah.”

“S-said he n-needed—needed…” Samandriel spoke again. “Broke the window, broke the window—said he n-needed assis-assis-assistance. Others—g-good men, Miss S-Sera said…” They managed to still their head, looking up with empty sockets. “M-my assistance w-was insuff-suff-sufficient.”

“No,” Gabriel said—probably too loud, but, fuck, he wanted to _scream_. “No, kid, that’s not why they did this.”

“Th-then why?”

 _TARRED BITCH_.

Sam stood up and took a big step back, as if Samandriel had bit him. “Where the fuck is Sera? She was supposed to open hours ago, no way she hasn’t seen this.” He glared at the shattered window, cupped his hands around his mouth. “ _Sera_! Sera, you in there?”

A moment of dense silence, then the click and crunch of broken glass under shoes. Seige crept into view of the window, brandishing an old brick in her hand—probably a loose one from somewhere in the building. She was _snarling_ at them, her fear somehow clear behind her narrowed eyes and bared teeth.

“Go away,” she barked. “Go _away_ , Sam!”

He threw up his hands, “Whoa, hey, we just got here, we didn’t—”

At the same time, Gabriel scrambled to his feet and slid into place between Sam and Seige. “They’re still fixable, they’re _alive_ —”

“I know you didn’t—what?” Seige lowered the brick, eyes widening. “He’s okay?”

“No, he’s not fucking _okay_.” Gabriel shook his head. “Hey, no, first things first, who the fuck _did_ do this?”

“I have an idea, I don’t know for sure.” Her voice was thick and her cheeks were wet and Gabriel appreciated the fury in her eyes more than he could ever say. “Everyone was angry about Samandriel, _everyone_ wanted him gone. But I know it wasn’t you, Sam. I know you wouldn’t, even if you were upset…” She gave a hiccoughy sob.

Sam was tense at Gabriel’s back, and Gabriel wondered, with a sick stab of dread and guilt, whether that was actually true.

“I can’t call the guards,” Seige said, stemming the leak of tears from one eye with the heel of her hand. “They’ll come back, those assholes will come back and do worse if I get angel help. I don’t know what to do, and I can’t fix Samandriel myself, I don’t… I got him preset out of a _box_.”

“You gotta send him back,” Sam said. “Return him, he’ll get fixed.”

Gabriel’s fists tightened until his palms felt bruised. “Only if the repairs cost less than what they can be resold for. And judging by the shape they’re in…” He eyed the angel on the ground as a fresh wave of misery and violent anger crested and crashed over him. “You’re cheaper to scrap, buddy. Sorry.” He swallowed a morbid laugh at the thought that maybe Samandriel’s attackers had known that.

—SAID YOU COULD—GET ME HELP—HELP—

_Looks like I was wrong. Thanks for not outing me, by the way, you’re a real peach, kiddo._

—HURTS—IF I AM TO—BE SCRAPPED IT WILL NOT—HURT?

_No. I promise, Samandriel, by the time they get to you it won’t hurt anymore. And the fuckers who did this’ll be smears on the goddamn street, okay? I promise that, too._

He knew, every bit of him knew, that that could never happen. That his offer was empty, void even of good intentions. Gabriel couldn’t compromise the mission by going vigilante on vandals. Torturers, but not really. Murderers, but not legally. All they did was blind, quarter, and disembowel Sera Seige’s talking coffeepot. Raphael knew, now. Raphael would deal with it, in Raphael’s fashion.

Which left this part—the fun part, really—up to Gabriel.

“You gotta switch him off.”

Seige shook her head, like a child trying to banish bad news. “No.”

“You _have_ to, Sera, or they’ll scrap him awake.” They probably wouldn’t, but. “You said it yourself—if you get him fixed, if you get help at _all_ , you’ll be an even bigger target. Who knows how far this thing could spiral?” ( _Cru-u-u-nch and click against the floor._ )

“No, no, I can’t turn him off, I _can’t_.”

Sam stepped forward. “Sera, I know—”

Seige curled a lip. “No you don’t, Sam! You hate these things, you don’t understand—I know I’ve only had him a couple of weeks, but he’s not just a machine, he’s a _person_. I can’t kill him, Sam, I’ll be killing him!”

“Out of _mercy_.” Sam’s voice was calm and quiet, but it carried. “It’s better than leaving him awake like this.”

The quiet spread, thin and brittle. Seige dropped the brick, nodding, and stepped over the jagged remains of the shattered window out onto the street. She knelt beside Samandriel, gathered their head in her lap.

“Hey,” she murmured. “It’s me, Dree, it’s me…”

“Miss S-Sera, I under-der-stand this w-will not hurt.”

“No, it won’t hurt.” She turned their head so she could have access to their Halo—held down the pad of her thumb to ID herself and began to tap out a pattern. Gabriel counted the strokes. “Not a bit, Dree, it’s gonna stop hurting real soon.” She stopped, fingers hovering over the final tap of the shutdown sequence. “You did a good job,” she said.

“Th-thank you, Miss S-Sera.”

Seige smiled, and tapped.

 

———

 

She didn’t feel it, but she felt it. Short, soft pop, like wet lips parting, and that only because she’d been listening to Gabriel watch. She hadn’t known that Samandriel. Hadn’t known _any_ Samandriels, as Serviles meant for semi-public use never found their way to the penthouse.

“Charlotte?”

She buried herself in her jacket and kept her eye on the horizon over Levi’s shoulder—empty highway flanked by tall, dark pines. It was quiet and deep, like the crease of a needled canyon, an open wound on a needled giant.

“An angel got switched off,” Charlotte said, finally. “Gabriel saw it, so I was kinda… privy.”

Hannah was still as Charlotte passed the details on via Radio—the Samandriel’s broken body, Gabriel’s rage, Gabriel’s fear, Gabriel’s pain. They were still, and as quiet as the road.

 _That won’t be you, Hannah_ , Charlotte promised. _I’ll make sure that won’t be you_.

 

———

 

“You okay?”

It was the first thing Sam had said to him since they’d left the _Café_. He’d called in sick for the rest of his shift and they’d walked back to his apartment in silence, Gabriel’s mind firing a mile a millisecond at his side. Sera Seige had given them the names of her suspects, and Gabriel had sent a demand to Raphael that only those individuals be condemned. (Just before he’d turned his receiver off again: _Your discretion, bro, but please. Please._ ) He didn’t know whether Raphael would listen. It wasn’t as if Gabriel would’ve listened if he were in the same position—even now his insides whirred with the need to _do_ , to move, to bite and claw. His parts sang with a call for blood that went beyond fury, almost tripping into instinct. Like primal programming— _1a angels are family 1b protect your family 1c revenge is a dish best served by robotic fists_.

He supposed it didn’t matter what Raphael did, though; the only person in Bromley for whom Gabriel actually cared already had a price on his head, after all. And if everything went according to plan, that person would be gone before any action could be taken against Samandriel’s attackers. Still, metal hearts could bleed too.

Now Sam and Gabriel stood together in Sam’s living room, and Sam was asking a question that Gabriel couldn’t even begin to answer.

So instead of answering, Gabriel kissed him, all tongue and teeth. He braced himself on Sam’s shoulders, driving him back until they were collapsed on the couch, Gabriel lying between Sam’s thighs and rocking his hips.

Fast and wet and _bite_ as Gabriel drew a plump, pink lip into his mouth and sucked. Sam grunted and grabbed at a shoulderblade, at the meat of a thigh. “ _Gabe_.”

“Mmm.” Gabriel turned his attentions to Sam’s neck, burying himself in the crook. “Sam, wanna… wanna…”

Sam didn’t seem to hear him—his voice was drowned out by the chorus of moans tumbling from Sam’s lips, drawn out by kisses and friction. Gabriel went on, quiet, as he rolled his hips and grazed his teeth over soft skin. He told Sam everything, in murmurs, in prayers screamed towards a nonexistent frequency—and in hickeys. He deepened the press of his groin against Sam’s, the contact between their clothed cocks exquisite but not enough, not enough.

He sank his teeth into Sam’s collar. The yelp and groan Sam gasped out was rolled over by Gabriel’s growl as he reached under himself and thumbed open Sam’s jeans. Wrestled with them a moment—Sam pushed him off with a gentle hand on his chest and kicked his pants and boxers to the floor. Gabriel slipped out of his own jacket and shirt, watched Sam’s pupils dilate at the sight. Sam opened his mouth, wet and swollen, but didn’t say a word.

Gabriel dove back in to steal another rough kiss before repositioning himself, hiking Sam’s legs around his waist. “This okay?” he rasped.

Sam nodded.

“No, Sam.” Gabriel slipped a hand between them—ran a finger along Sam’s perineum before pressing it against his hole. “ _This okay_?”

Full-bodied shudder and a decidedly localized quiver, and Sam breathed out. “Yeah. God, yes, Gabe, yeah.”

Gabriel groped behind him for his wallet; it contained, among the other things, a small toolkit for self-repairs, including a miniature screwdriver and—ah, yes—a generous packet of lubricant. Not the personal kind, but non-toxic and good in a pinch. There was also a pre-lubed condom, for the usual reasons, and Gabriel took both out now, tossing the wallet on the floor with their clothes. He tore the packet with his teeth, kept his gaze locked with Sam’s as he coated his fingers.

Sam’s eyes fluttered shut when the first finger slipped in. He gripped the couch, arching and fucking back onto the intrusion. Begged for more immediately, already easing open for it, and Gabriel gave it gladly, muttering encouragement as he opened him. Sam was pliant under him, like clay, like earth, and when Gabriel inserted a third finger he surged forward to lap the sweat from his throat.

“Taste so good, baby,” he murmured. _Like something alive, something that can’t be killed with a finger-tap._ To demonstrate, he angled for Sam’s prostate, and grinned when that earned him a long groan.

“Fu-u-uck, Gabe…” Sam rolled his head ( _as if following something with eyes that were no longer there_ ) and bucked his hips. “God, fuck me, wanna feel you… wanna come with you inside me, fuck…”

“Yeah.” Gabriel squeezed out a bit more lube and gave a few more stretching shoves before removing his fingers and unbuttoning his pants. “Gonna fill you up, baby, make you feel so good… All mine, Sam, all mine…”

Sam didn’t answer, but Gabriel didn’t need him to. He rolled on the condom, slicked himself with the last of the lube, and _pressed_. Sam opened to him easily, inch by slow inch as Gabriel worked himself in. They breathed into each other’s mouths, soft, wet gusts, and when Gabriel met Sam’s eyes he saw something even softer, something that made him shut his at the last push.

Sensors fire, register pleasure,  _this is what it feels like to be inside Sam Winchester._

For a moment, Gabriel was still. Rested his forehead against Sam’s, focused on the way Sam’s heart was pounding through his chest, at the way Sam was clutching Gabriel’s shoulders like he was afraid to let go.

“I’ve got you,” Gabriel whispered, and kissed him.

He kept kissing him, during. His mouth dragged over Sam’s cheek and jaw, found a home on his throat, his shoulder, his chest. He drank moans and sighs from Sam’s lips as he moved. Sam was hot and tight around him, taut and breathless beneath him, and alive, alive, alive—

“Gabe,” he gasped. “Gabe…”

They found a rhythm somewhere between gentle and violent—deep, full strokes that knocked the noise out of Sam’s cries coupled with quick little pushes that made them hitch. Gabriel drowned in the sounds he made, in the taste of him, in the feel. Something about this felt so goddamn penultimate, and Gabriel wanted to memorize this beautiful, wonderful boy before he dissolved in his hands.

“Fuck—Gabe—Gabriel—”

“Oh, God, say that again.”

“ _Gabriel_.” Sam tensed and froze, wet fire painting Gabriel’s skin in thick ropes. Starbursts, and Gabriel followed on a low sob—the world went waxen, warm and soft, and he collapsed against Sam’s chest with a sigh.

Then there was quiet. Quiet, and a sleepy peace. Gabriel hummed in answer to Sam’s earlier question, though he knew it wouldn’t be taken as such.

 _No, I’m not okay_.

 

Sam had fallen asleep under him, after Gabriel had slipped out and they’d exchanged a handful of afterglow grins. It was a shallow sleep, but heavy enough that Gabriel didn’t fear waking him when he got up.

He had a long, luxurious shower, then, once he was dry, crept into Sam’s bedroom to steal a shirt. He needed to test a theory—namely, that he looked adorable in oversized button-downs.

Gabriel slipped on a pale blue plaid number that absolutely swam on him and turned to the full-length mirror on the back of Sam’s door. Oh, yeah. Definitely adorable.

In the coming hours, he would wish that he had stopped there.

But he couldn’t stop himself from catching sight of the shape under the bed in the mirror. Adjust his vision, identify it as a box engraved with Grace script. Turn, return to the bed and fall to his hands and knees, because _holy shit_.

He pulled the box out—it was heavy but not particularly large, and made of lacquered wood. A small silver padlock hung off the front of it. Gabriel examined the script, realizing with dawning horror that it was a code to obfuscate angelic scans—the thing had a goddamn _invisibility spell_ carved into it.

This was what he’d been looking for. This had to be the evidence Raphael wanted, or at least part of it.

Gabriel didn’t want to open it.

Gabriel had to open it.

A quick disarming sigil to void the code and a slice of his Third Eye’s laser later, he tossed the ruined padlock aside and lifted the lid.

Three large chunks of what looked like obsidian sat in a nest of patchy grey wool. They might’ve been completely innocuous, if not for the way they seemed to subsume the light and swallow the air—if not for the sheer, unmistakable power signature they were emitting. Gabriel felt his Grace spit and squirm inside him, like oil held over high heat. He didn’t know what the chunks were, or what they meant. And fuck, he didn’t want to find out.

“Get away from there _right the fuck now_.”

Oh.

Oh, no.

Gabriel shut the lid, stood, and whirled around in one quick movement. Sam stood in the door, fully dressed and looking some horrific, twisted mesh of furious and terrified.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said, voice hoarse. “God _dammit_ , Gabe, why the _fuck_ did you have to do that?”

“Sam. Sam, let me explain.”

“You weren’t supposed to see that, nobody is supposed to see that, I’m fucking dead, I’m _dead_ , Gabe, why did you—”

“I didn’t know, Sam, I just— _shit_!”

One second Sam had reached into his jacket, and the next Gabriel was staring down the barrel of a handgun. An unnervingly rock-steady handgun.

“Sit down,” Sam said, and his voice wasn’t nearly as steady as his hand. “We need to talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: That is a real waterslide. It's called the Valley of Fear at Cultus Lake Waterpark in BC and it's TERRIFYING.


	8. Crunch

Gabriel raised his hands to the level of his eyes, palms forward. “Sam,” he said, “you don’t wanna shoot me.”

“No, I don’t.” Sam swallowed, his mouth set grim and cold. “But I will if I have to, so don’t give me a reason. Sit down.”

“Come on, you’re not really—” Sam cocked the gun. “—Whoa, okay, yes, yes you are.”

Gabriel dropped to the mattress, keeping his hands held high. Eyed the gun—it was an old-fashioned model, leftover from a time when metal bullet production was more of a _thing_. Modern plasma blasters could burn through ‘bots, but, depending on the grade of Sam’s ammo, a shot from that handgun would barely slow Gabriel down. Still. It was the principle of the matter.

“This is crazy,” Gabriel snapped. “I don’t even know what those things _are_ , what am I gonna tell people? You’ve got some rocks under your bed?”

“That won’t matter. I haven’t figured out how to code the walls, and with the fucking signal those things give off…” Sam’s jaw twitched. “If any angels felt you open that box, even a _twinge_ of it, they could be coming for me.”

Gabriel resisted the urge to scratch himself—his Grace still itched beneath his skin, still running warm and sick from whatever power had wafted off those black chunks. Yeah, if a border guard caught a whiff of _that_ …

“Look, I’m sorry, Sam, but we can’t fix that now. It’s done—it sucks, but it’s _done_. What would killing me change? It’s not like there’s anything to torture out of me if the guards _do_ show up.”

Sam’s grip on the gun relaxed slightly, and he looked young, so young. “You don’t understand, Gabe. The people who gave me those, they won’t care that you don’t know what they are, or what they do. You’re a loose end, and if I don’t get rid of you, they will.”

 _So there’s a “they”. Let it be known he didn’t act alone, Raph, we need to keep him alive_. Of course, keeping Sam alive didn’t necessarily mean keeping him whole, but Gabriel had to do what he could. At the moment, that was blessedly little.

“Again, I have no idea what’s going on; what am I gonna tell anybody?” He widened his eyes, parted his lips ever so slightly, affected as earnest a look as he could muster. “Do you really think I _would_ tell anybody? Sam, if this is something you’re willing to kill for, I… I wouldn’t do that to you. You have to believe me.”

Sam’s features twitched, like his entire face was seconds from crumpling. “Can I even trust you?”

“Well, I mean, if you have to ask…” Gabriel laughed humourlessly. The question hurt to hear, but he deserved it. “You know me, Sam, even if you haven’t known me long. Honestly, there’s not much to know—sex jokes and a sweet tooth, that’s about all there is.” He held Sam’s eye, made his go sober and steely. “You can trust me.”

Dramatic pauses, he decided, were overrated. The quiet crept down his throat and clung there, louder than noise and begging to be broken. Sam broke it, finally, with the whistle of the gun arcing down to his side—the break was imperceptible to him, of course, but Gabriel was grateful for it. He blew out a long breath and gave Sam a shaky smile as he lowered his hands.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“Please don’t… you have to understand,” Sam said, running a hand over his face, “this is… I can’t tell you why, Gabe, but this is important to me. More than you could ever know. I… I’m sorry, Gabe, I’m so sorry, I—”

Gabriel held up a finger. “Don’t apologize to me, Sam.” _You really shouldn’t_. He stood and slipped into Sam’s space, his smile steadier now, but thin. “I get it. I shouldn’t have been snooping anyway—looks like I literally opened Pandora’s fucking box.”

He pulled Sam in for a kiss, firm but chaste. Sam melted into it, his free hand coming to rest in the small of Gabriel’s back. Gabriel hummed against his lips, surprised but not unhappy that he’d managed to right things so quickly.

Then Sam pulled back and asked, “Wait… how _did_ you open it?”

“Hmm?” Gabriel ignored his flutter of panic and tried to smother the moment with another kiss.

Sam held him down, took a step out of his arms. “Gabe,” he said, slow and flat, “that box was padlocked shut. How did you open it?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Picked it.”

Sam took another step back, frowning. “Why don’t I believe you?” he said, like he was honestly asking. Like he was surprised he had to ask.

Before Gabriel could stop him, he’d loped past and dropped to his knees in front of the box, picking up the remains of the padlock. “This was _cut_ ,” he said. He got to his feet and whirled on Gabriel, eyes hard. “This was cut _clean through_. Gabe, what the fuck? How did you do this?”

“Sam…”

“No, you would need tools to do this, or a laser, or—” Sam froze, fingering the sliced metal and staring at Gabriel, whose mind had become a blank void of hushed code and _no no no no no_. “Gabe.” Sam closed his eyes. “Gabriel. Fucking… _Gabriel_.”

“Sam, I—” Gabriel took a step forward only to be met with the gun again, this time pressed between his eyes.

 

———

 

At long last, Levi pulled up to the barracks. The building was wide and flat and grey, and appeared to be less than a storey tall. The rest extended underground, with a driveway dipping into a garage at one end. Charlotte was half asleep; long car rides had always tuckered her out as a kid. Yet another reason why she’d always managed to convince herself not to just get her license and take off—too long on the road and she’d fall asleep at the wheel.

Hannah had to nudge her back to full consciousness after they and Levi unpacked the car. They led her out of the garage, keeping their conversation silent and private, nothing but gentle prods at her mind, a light buzz of static to keep her grounded. Charlotte, for her part, held Hannah’s hand and allowed herself to be led like a child through whitewashed hallways bathed in bluish fluorescents.

She found her luggage—and Levi—behind a thick, steel door, in a room that managed to be both spacious and cramped. It was overwhelmingly _orange_ ; the floor was cherrywood laminate, the walls covered in yellow-beige soundproof paneling. A worktable with an expansive array of tools took up the far wall, below a strip of treated glass at ceiling-height that acted as a pitiful window. The left wall was cramped with an archport, sink, and a floor-to-ceiling cooler—one corner stuffed with a small dining table and the other with a door that Charlotte hoped led to a bathroom. Against the right were her bags, a dresser, and a twin bed.

“Wow,” she deadpanned, voice still clogged with sleep. “I traded up.”

“These barracks weren’t designed for civilian use, Artifex—let alone _your_ use.” Levi looked and broadcasted worry. “This was the only room available that was sufficiently cordoned off from the Gadreels’ quarters. Archangel Raphael didn’t want you to have to bunk with them.”

“Yeah, okay, sure. Translation: he didn’t want me getting attached.” Charlotte laughed, rubbed the back of her neck. “H-he’s such a goddamn tight-ass. Don’t worry about it, this is… this is fine.”

Levi smiled. “You needn’t hold back, you know. Anything you want is yours, Artifex.”

Charlotte dropped her eyes to her feet, stuffed into white shoes stark and blinding against the floorboards. “I d-don’t want anything,” she said. “I promise.”

Then—sting.

Charlotte yelped, snapped up her head. Like with the shutdown of the Samandriel in the car, she didn’t feel it, but she _felt_ it—a sudden wave of itchy heat in her mind, a muted extension of what she knew Hannah and Levi and all the Gadreels must’ve been feeling. Hannah stood stock-still, eyes wide as their fingers twitched, as their mouth worked soundlessly around air. Levi was actually scratching himself, blind panic in his expression. Both of their frequencies were scrambled, their voices garbled in Charlotte’s mind like they were on the verge of shutdown, too.

Then—nothing.

It was gone almost completely in an instant, leaving nothing but a dull fizzle in the back of Charlotte’s brain. At the same time, she felt a jolt of fear from Gabriel, stabbing like a bolt then sitting, crackling, between her eyes. Levi and Hannah stared at each other, their now-clear frequencies blankly confused.

“What the _fuck_?” Charlotte breathed. “What the hell was that?” _Shit, Gabriel, why’d you have to turn off your fucking receiver?_

“I have never felt anything like that before,” Hannah said, their nose tugging like it was trying to wrinkle.

Levi shook his head. “Neither have I…” He met Charlotte’s eye. “Artifex, do you hear anything? Feel anything, any—”

“I refer you to my previous _what the fuck_ ,” she snapped. Sagged when she felt Levi do the same. “I-I’m sorry, I, um, I’m just freaking out.”

ALL TRANSMISSION-CAPABLE ANGELS IN THE BROMLEY AREA: PLEASE INDICATE YOUR CURRENT STATE OF AWARENESS.

It was Metatron, Raphael’s official town crier, clearly responding to the suddenly muddled signals. Charlotte heard a flurry of sound-offs, shut her eyes and tried to drown them out. When they ceased, Metatron broadcasted again.

THANK YOU. PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT WE HAVE IDENTIFIED THE SOURCE OF THIS DISTURBANCE, AND THE SITUATION IS BEING ASSESSED CURRENTLY. STAND BY.

Of course. Charlotte didn’t doubt that Raphael and his dispatchers knew exactly what was going on—she also didn’t doubt that it had something, if not everything, to do with Gabriel’s now-ebbing freakout. She shuffled to the cooler, flung open the door and peered at the contents for a long minute.

“There’s no booze,” she said, finally.

“Uh, no, there isn’t. The Serviles who stocked the room were issued a very specific menu to…”

“Oh my god, this is the hardest thing in here,” Charlotte muttered as Levi prattled on, plucking a bottle of Blasto’s! sugar-free soda from the cooler shelf. “Of all the times when I needed a f-fucking drink…”

“… assure you it’s no trouble if you’d like me to send out for a six pack, but it’ll have to wait until—”

Hannah glanced sideways at Levi, and Charlotte guessed by the hums in her brain that they were telling him to shut up. He did, bowing his head sheepishly, and Charlotte swore Hannah looked something close to smug. Charlotte almost laughed. _Thank you_.

That blessed moment of relative silence, of course, was exactly when Gabriel’s frequency rushed to the forefront of her mind again.

 

———

 

“You’re a goddamn angel.” Sam’s jaw was tight, his nostrils flared, his eyes somehow both steely and pained. “Aren’t you?”

“What the _fuck_?” Gabriel laughed. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“How’d you cut the lock? You’re half-naked—what, do you keep a toolkit up your ass?”

“Y’know, I’m beginning to think I’m a bad influence on you.”

Sam snarled. “ _Are you an angel_ , Gabriel?”

The coolness of the metal ghosted at his Third Eye, and on the other end of the gun Gabriel saw his mission unraveling. He’d failed. Sam would never trust him now—Sam was as good as dead now. Doomed to the pale mercies of APkA for harbouring suspicious materials, for threatening an agent, for threatening government property. ( _Pinesap and shampoo and_ ) Sam would be reduced to a sack of bones and meat; Gabriel would have to pretend that was all he ever was.

Gabriel numbed. Let himself go cold, go _angel_. He neutralized his expression, allowed it to take on that vacant, moonfaced quality characteristic of fresh-on-the-market Nus. Might as well look the part.

“I have to wonder,” he said, cocking his head, “which is worse—the fact that you were tricked by a ‘bot, or the fact that you just let one fuck you.”

Horror bloomed white in Sam’s face, and the gun shook. “No…”

“Or maybe,” Gabriel went on, moving forward so he was solidly pressed against the barrel of the gun, forcing Sam to push back to keep him at arm’s length. “Maybe it’s the fact that you trusted one enough to invite it into your home, into your bed, into your _life_ , without even thinking. Maybe it’s that you actually thought you could sneak off to the border undetected tonight. That no angel would ever find what was under your bed. That you were _safe_ with me.”

“God…”

Gabriel sneered. “Not quite.”

 

———

 

_Get him out of there right now, Raph, do you fucking understand me?_

I’M SENDING THE CLOSEST GADREELS TO THE APARTMENT AS WE SPEAK, MOTHER. DON’T WORRY; GABRIEL KNOWS WHAT HE’S DOING.

_Please, you heard the transmission last night as well as I did. Your brother doesn’t know jackshit about what he’s doing._

 

———

 

“You can shoot me if you want,” Gabriel said airily. “It won’t kill me. It’ll hurt, and it’ll sure as fuck slow me down, but I’ll be fixed soon enough. And we both know you won’t get far.”

If anything, Sam’s grip on the gun tightened. “Fuck you.”

“Hey, that one wasn’t a dig! The cavalry’s coming, and long as your legs are, there’s no way you can outrun a Military angel. They can fly, Sam.”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Sam repeated. “God _dammit_ , how could I have been stupid enough to fall for this? The whole time, you were just trying to trap me.”

“Yeah, we covered this. Hi, I’m Gabriel, professional android honeypot.”

“Shut the _fuck up_.” The barrel of the gun bit deeper into Gabriel’s skin, and Sam huffed a bitter laugh. “I can’t believe I actually felt sorry for one of you today. Or were you behind Samandriel, too, trying to make me give a shit about angels so I wouldn’t kill you when I found out?”

Gabriel was surprised by how much that stung. “Do you really think I’d do something like that?”

“All things considered, I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“Fair.” Gabriel resumed his flat, cold expression. “The guards are almost here,” he said. He, of course, wasn’t sure whether they were or not, but he could calculate their probable timing. “If I were you, kiddo, I’d tell them everything.”

Sam’s mouth tightened. “Well, you’re not me. It’s not that easy for me to turn on people.”

“Please. You think it’s fun playing the hero? You get to feel noble for ten seconds, and then they make it hurt. And trust me; they _will_ make it hurt. You’ll give up what you know one way or another—but a little self-loathing beats dying bloody in chains.”

“Like I care.” There were tears in Sam’s eyes, choking the edge of his voice. Slight, barely there, but _there_ all the same. “You have no idea what I’m actually doing, or why. It _means_ something to me, and if I die for it, I’ll mean something too.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. He heard the faint sound of the Gadreels gathering on the street outside, preparing to burst in. Held Sam’s gaze, catalogued the patterns of his irises to memory. “Well. I hope that thought still comforts you tomorrow, Sam.”

A loud crash echoed from downstairs as the Gadreels burst through the front door. Sam’s face blanched and he grit his teeth.

“Last chance, kiddo,” Gabriel said. “Drop the gun and go quietly.”

Sam spat at his feet.

Crack and the crunch of splintering wood, and the door collapsed open. Four Gadreels tromped into the room, armed with huge plasma blaster guns and vicious snarls. Gabriel screamed across his frequency for them to _go easy on him, I’m not in danger_ —but the closest Gadreel ignored him, slamming the butt of its blaster into the back of Sam’s head.

Sam folded with a grunt, crumpled to the floor. The Gadreel who knocked him kicked the gun out of his hand.

“We had our orders,” it said coolly. “Our apologies, Archangel.”

Gabriel gave a terse nod, watching as Sam’s limp body was cuffed and hoisted up between two angels. He felt nothing. He had to feel nothing. He would make himself feel nothing. “Sure.”

( _Cru-u-u-nch_ )

One of the Gadreels picked up the box with the black stones inside. Then it and their its took their leave of him, offering firm nods and blank stares beneath which, he assumed, were the low, abrupt tones of inter-angelic salute, broadcasted to a transmitter that couldn’t hear them. Speaking of which—Gabriel closed his eyes and, after a quick chat with his neurocentre, his receiver fired back to life.

He opened his eyes to the sight of the Gadreels’ receding backs. Sam groaned as they took him away, but he didn’t stir. Gabriel’s mission was complete. Botched, but complete. He could leave Bromley if he wanted, and he never had to come back.

GABRIEL. Naomi’s frequency rose above the rest. THE GADREEL UNITS CURRENTLY DEPARTING WITH WINCHESTER ARE HEADED TO A MILITARY BARRACKS JUST OUTSIDE OF BROMLEY. YOUR ORDERS ARE TO FOLLOW THEM—THERE’S AN APKA AGENT ON HIS WAY TO THE BARRACKS WHO HAS BEEN CLEARED TO INTERROGATE THE SUSPECT, BUT IF YOU ARE TO SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETE YOUR MISSION IT WOULD BE BEST IF YOU WERE PRIVY.

So much for leaving. _What do you mean, complete it? I got the kid, didn’t I?_

YES, BUT WE HAVE INCOMPLETE DATA AS TO HIS INTENT AND OPERATIONS. WE STILL NEED YOU TO ACQUIRE THAT INFORMATION.

_Are you fucking kidding me right now, Naomi? I’ve been outed; I’m useless to you._

FOR UNDERCOVER WORK WITH WINCHESTER, YES, BUT THAT’S NO LONGER WHAT WE’RE ASKING OF YOU. REPORT TO THE BARRACKS, ARCHANGEL.

Naomi’s frequency returned to the depths, and Gabriel wanted nothing more than to turn off his receiver and his transmitter both and fly, fly away.

He was given the option to fly, in fact. When he joined the Gadreels on the street, he was given the option to follow the ones carrying the box to the barracks by air instead of the ones hoisting Sam into a criminal transport. Gabriel considered the merits of getting in the car. A part of him wanted to, wanted to be there when Sam came to and _make_ him understand that Gabriel was sorry—if not for everything, then at least for what was about to happen.

It was cold high in the air.

 

———

 

Charlotte had hoped she’d get a chance to see Gabriel in Bromley. She hadn’t imagined their first reunion after two months apart would begin by him bursting into her room wearing nothing but an oversized shirt.

“G-Gabriel, what the _hell_?”

He stopped in the middle of the barracks room, staring blankly forward. Still as stone and just as empty—Charlotte imagined she could hear dialup sounds echoing from his head. Hannah shut the door behind him, staying quiet in the corner as Charlotte approached her son.

“Gabriel?”

“They want me in there,” he said flatly. “They want me in the room while they interrogate him.”

Charlotte rubbed her arm, swallowing air. She’d been expecting Gabriel to balk. She’d been waiting for it ever since he and Winchester had arrived at the barracks four hours earlier. No matter how privately proud she was that he’d come to her, it didn’t make it any easier to watch him hurt.

“I can’t fucking help them,” he muttered. “Sam doesn’t wanna talk to me. These assholes know as much as I do—probably more now that they’re examining those freaky rocks. So _why_ ,” he whirled on Charlotte, his eyes wide and furious, “do they still need me here, huh?”

When she didn’t answer, he shook his head, laughing. “Naomi sent in Zachariah. _Zachariah_. He’s been alone with Sam for an hour and they’re already calling me in. How tough can the kid be?” His lip curled, like he knew exactly how tough Sam was. “Tell them they don’t need me. They might actually listen to you.”

Charlotte sighed. “O-okay, Gabe, sit down and l-let’s talk about this… m-maybe you could put on some pants…”

He glared at her, gesturing to his state of undress. “Oh, I’m sorry, does this _bother_ you?”

“J-j-just sit, Gabriel.”

Gabriel did, dragging a chair away from the dining table and lighting daintily. He crossed his legs and arched a brow at Charlotte. “Made this dick and you can’t even look at it.”

“I’m being polite, smartass.” Charlotte slumped down on the twin bed.

“No, polite would be _admiring_ your masterpiece of silicone and gender-nonspecific wet dreams. Will you help me or not?”

Charlotte chewed her lip. For the second time in as many days, she risked pushing one son away by denying him. Her relationship with Gabriel was much less distant than her relationship with Raphael, but still. She resented them both, briefly, for forcing her to confront the conditional nature of affection.

( _Love cools; love goes greasy_.)

“I-it’s not a m-matter of, uh, of…” She shook her head. “I c-can’t.”

For a moment his eyes looked dead, almost like glass. He blinked, and they were a perfect golden mimicry again. “Should’ve figured as much.”

“Gabe, I-I know you don’t… don’t wanna be in there, b-but—”

“Don’t bother explaining. I get it.” His gaze flitted to Hannah, then back to Charlotte. “Who’s the Nu?”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Hannah, this is Gabriel, the, um, A-archangel Gabriel. Gabe, this is Hannah. They’re m-my—my Personal.”

Gabriel scoffed. “Well, look at that. Invited on one expedition and you’ve already got a government-issued Short Round, Indy.”

Hannah remained silent, though Charlotte could feel their frequency tickling at the back of her mind, like a child tugging on its mother’s coattails. “I b-bought them, actually.”

That was probably the wrong thing to say. Gabriel went blank and cold again, and Charlotte felt oily with guilt. She knew what he was thinking. He and Raphael may have been emancipated, may even have been considered vaguely legendary—the Dolly the Sheep of their day—but at the end of the day the world still saw them as machines. Eden’s most powerful weapons. Raphael had embraced that identity, but Gabriel had always sought respite from it. Perhaps that was why he spent so much time pretending to be human. Charlotte tried to be part of that respite for him, _tried_ being the operative word.

“I-I did it s-so I could b-bring them with me,” she said quickly. _And to protect them,_ she added over Radio. _They’re in danger of being scrapped otherwise._

Gabriel sneered. “Oh, like you protected the Castiels? Like you’re protecting the Gadreels now? Levi told me why you’re here—you’re on a snuff mission, and you’re playing favourites with some random Servile? Don’t pretend like you actually care about these half-baked HALs, Mom. You’ve just picked out a pet.”

Guilt melted into something sicker, Charlotte’s gut collapsing like hollow earth. She glanced at Hannah, who was staring at her with an eerie, vague expression that looked like it might be hurt.

IS THAT TRUE, CHARLOTTE?

And suddenly Charlotte was furious.

“Y’know what, Gabriel,” she snapped, “I could say the same thing about you.”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes. “Oh, yeah?”

“Damn right I could. Y-you don’t care about Winchester, not really. You just don’t wanna go in that room ‘cause you don’t wanna be one of the bad guys. Guess what—he’s gonna hate you either way, champ.”

For the first time in Charlotte’s recent memory, Gabriel was speechless. His glare was enough to make her bones feel loose, but his mouth was clamped shut, and his frequency was silent. So she ploughed on.

“Do—do you really think they want you in there so you can give them _torture tips_? They want you there because you know how to talk to him. Y-yeah, they have the same info as you, but they don’t know how to use it. You know people, Gabriel, and you know this kid. If you can get him to talk, you can _keep_ them from torturing him.”

“For how long?” Gabriel’s voice was brittle and flat, and Charlotte hated herself for making it so.

“I don’t know. But if you don’t step in, you’re guaranteeing he’ll be hurt worse. The only upside is you won’t have to watch.”

Gabriel dropped his gaze, and Charlotte used the ensuing silence as an opportunity to reach out to Hannah’s frequency. She gave it a warm, tickling stroke with her own, a little trick she’d used on the archangels daily before the Fall.

 _No_ , she sent. _It’s not true._

A moment’s hesitation, then Charlotte felt Hannah return the gesture. Weakly, but the fact that they could do it at all made Charlotte smile. _Not so dysfunctional after all, are you?_

“I wish I hadn’t found that fucking box,” Gabriel spat, suddenly.

Charlotte’s smile dissolved. “Christ, I don’t. Gabe, didn’t they tell you what the stones _are_?”

“No. I guess I don’t rate very high on the needs-to-know list.”

She rolled her eyes. “Quit it with the p-pity party, okay? C’mon, I’ll show you.”

They both stood, and Charlotte put up a hand. “Might, uh, might wanna put on pants first, though. Big, life-changing nights require pants.”

Gabriel snorted. “Bitch, please.”

 

Freshly clad in a pair of Charlotte’s jeans—they were a little tight in the ass, but he’d insisted definition was his friend—and a pair of borrowed shoes, Gabriel followed Charlotte and Hannah down the barracks corridor. Hannah was technically leading, with subtle nudges of Grace to Charlotte’s mind when they hit turns, because she for the life of her couldn’t remember the way.

Finally they came to a heavy door flanked by Gadreels, who nodded at Charlotte as they approached.

“Greetings, Artifex,” one of them said. “Do you wish to reenter the room?”

“I, uh, y-yeah. A-and I’ll—I w-wanna bring these two in w-with me, this time.”

Light flared briefly from the Gadreels’ eyes as they scanned Hannah and Gabriel. They seemed to zone out for a moment, then blinked and nodded again.

“That is acceptable,” said the second Gadreel. “The three of you may proceed, Artifex. Have a pleasant evening.”

Charlotte made a face. “Y-yeah, sure.”

The door slid open with a low scrape, and Charlotte led the way into the room beyond. It was relatively tiny, and bare save for a small metal table in the middle and the dead-eyed bodies of eight Gadreels lined against the far wall. On the table were the black stones. They’d been removed from their sigiled box and were now ensconced in glass that rippled with protective Grace code.

As soon as Gabriel and Hannah entered the room, the door slid shut again behind them, and the walls began to ripple with the exact same code. Charlotte felt questioning curls of frequency buzzing at her temples, and she strode around the table to face her companions. She placed her palms on the glass, peering at gleaming black between her fingertips.

“This stuff,” she said, “is Grace.”

Gabriel and Hannah jerked towards the table in unison, the former frowning and the latter looking like they might be sick but weren’t terribly committed to the feeling.

“What the fuck?” Gabriel blinked at her. “That can’t be Grace, it… what _happened_ to it?”

“Didn’t we surmise that these were the objects that disturbed our Grace earlier?” Hannah asked. “Perhaps it’s merely a form of the substance incompatible with our own?”

“So, what, Sam somehow engineered a new type of Grace?” Gabriel shook his head. “No, he said he still hadn’t figured out how to code his house to hide the rocks. He _definitely_ wouldn’t have been able to hide their production, not with the power sig these little fuckers give off. However this crap was made, it had to have come from somewhere else.”

Charlotte grimaced. “Yeah, exactly. I-I don’t… okay, they brought me in to look at it earlier, and I thought it was just a new type too, once I realized what it was. Which, I mean, if you’ve never handled solid Grace, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell, y’know? But here…”

She really didn’t want to do this again so soon. She’d nearly collapsed the first time she’d done it—Levi had caught her and held her upright, and she’d clung to him like an infant until she managed to regain feeling in her legs. But she didn’t trust herself to explain it without bursting into tears, and there was no way in hell she was about to do that in front of Gabriel.

Charlotte made her way to one of the switched-off Gadreels—one of the defunct units she’d been called in to investigate. She turned its head and tapped out a start-up sequence on its Halo.

When it began to glow, it glowed black.

The Gadreel opened its eyes, and Charlotte felt her stomach turn and her skin begin to crawl, like the beginnings of carsickness. Itchy heat flared in her fingertips, and a quick glance at Gabriel and Hannah showed that they were feeling the same thing. A watered-down version of the earlier surge of power.

“I don’t know how it happened,” Charlotte said, shutting down the Gadreel before it had a chance to acclimatize to being awake. “B-but all these broken units… they’re running on that black Grace. Raph said the difference between the healthy Gadreels and these ones is so subtle they needed my help to isolate it, but even that tiny change is doing _this_.”

Hannah cocked their head. “And other than _this_ , how is the malfunction manifesting? What exactly are the Gadreels doing under the influence of the black Grace?”

Charlotte shrugged. “I, uh, I asked the same thing. No answer. And let’s be honest, no answer is… _significantly_ more terrifying than anything they could actually say.” She turned to Gabriel, who was staring at the stones with knotted brows. “Gabe. I know you don’t want to do this. But we have to figure out what’s going on, and Winchester’s the only one who can give us a clue.”

Gabriel met her gaze. “You’re right,” he said, and her heart broke at the heaviness in his eyes. “I’ll talk to him.”

“I’m… I’m sorry, Gabriel.”

He shrugged and offered a dimpled, empty smile. “Nah, it’s like you said. He’ll hate me either way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I missed last week, I think I'm just going to post all the chapters now. The once a week thing is taking a while and nobody seems to really be responding :P


	9. The Inquisition

Inquisitor Zachariah stepped out of the interrogation room smirking like a ferret with blood in its teeth. He smoothed his hands over the front of his suit and turned the smile on Gabriel, who was leaning against the far wall. The Gadreels guarding the door didn’t react to his emergence—most likely at his request. Zachariah adjusted his tie, briefly exposing the bracer at his throat. He’d declined all offers of implants or wigs to hide his Halo, and he often claimed—loudly—that he displayed it as a sign of deference to Equin. To show them he had nothing to fear, for he had nothing to hide.

“Ah, Gabriel.” His tone was warm but his mouth was cold metal. “So glad you decided to join us.”

Gabriel pushed off from the wall. “Calm your tits, Zach. I just needed a little prep time before I drove it home.” He winked.

Zachariah’s smirk set. “Once again, you prove the sophistication of Pre-Fall tech. In the future, I hope you’ll remember that as far as APkA’s concerned, I outrank you, Archangel.” His tongue hit the l and rolled the title into a dirty word. “When I tell you I request your presence, I’m not actually giving you an option.”

“No, _my_ dick’s bigger.”

Ignoring the comment, Zachariah projected a rundown of Sam’s interrogation up to that point into Gabriel’s mind. Basic intimidation, a few verbal games, and some roughing up—it was labeled as _light corporal punishment_ in the file, but Gabriel knew where APkA’s Inquisitors drew the line between heavy and light.

“He hasn’t told us anything yet,” Zachariah said. “Hasn’t given up any names, motives… I’m close to confessing myself impressed.”

“Yeah, he’s a stupid kid.” Gabriel swallowed the data and squared his shoulders. “So. You want I should take a crack?”

Zachariah’s mouth broke into a mocking sprawl of synthetic bone. “You don’t seem particularly enthusiastic, Gabriel. I understand. It must be difficult to face a professional failure so soon after its occurrence. But rest assured—as a human, I’m sure Winchester will stick to personal insults.”

“And how will I handle that, what with everyone else being so nice to me all the time?”

“I just want to make sure you’re ready to approach the boy in this new setting. You can’t go rooting around for answers in his backside anymore.”

Gabriel stilled. He closed the space between himself and Zachariah in a quick couple of steps, the Gadreels’ minds beginning to buzz warnings at him as he did so.

“You might outrank me, Zachariah,” he said, his voice cold and lilting, “but you don’t outclass me. Don’t push your luck, babe.”

Zachariah’s smile thinned, went catlike. “Forgive me for not shutting down. You’re a _field agent_ , Archangel, and even nepotism couldn’t get you further than that.”

Gabriel laughed and hooked two fingers in Zachariah’s collar, tugging at his tie just enough to bare his bracer and the name etched into it. “Big talk for a collared dog.”

He pushed past the Inquisitor, reaching for the access panel on the door and quickly setting it to autolock until Gabriel hit its counterpoint inside the room. The last thing he wanted was Zachariah bursting in on him while he was talking to Sam.

“Keep your communication systems on, Gabriel, and make sure they’re tuned to me,” Zachariah said over his shoulder.

“I know the rules, Zach.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t care less about the rules. But if you make another mistake, I want to hear it.”

 

The interrogation room was tiny, but lit and coloured in such a way as to make it appear cavernous and deeply shadowed. Sam sat in the middle of the room, shirtless and bound to a skeletal metal chair in a puddle of white light with no clear source. His right cheek was split and purpling, and blood was dribbling from his torn lip—bruises and sigil burns littered his skin. Earlier that day, that skin had passed unmarked under Gabriel’s hands, that mouth unbroken yielding to his. In the privacy of his own head, Gabriel played the recording of Sam’s laugh that he’d made during their first night together.

“Sam…”

He spoke as soon as the door shut and locked behind him, before he moved out of range of the shadows. Sam raised his head, wet eyes rolling towards the dark.

“Ga… Gabriel?”

His voice was small and coarse, and Gabriel had to make himself smile as he stepped into the light, all coy curling lip and no teeth.

“Hey, kiddo, how’s it hanging?” He stopped in front of the chair. Took a quick inventory of all of Sam’s visible injuries. “Tch. Looking a little worse for wear, aren’t we?”

Sam sniffed and strained weakly at his binds. “They think I’ll talk to you,” he said, short and bubbling angry.

“Yup. And they’re probably wrong.” Gabriel began circling the chair, itemizing bruises on Sam’s back and trying to look bored. “I told them that, too. But I’m not exactly high in the pecking order, believe it or not, so… here I am.” Bringing himself around again (counting forty-one marks, including lash-like burns along Sam’s spine), Gabriel sat on the floor in front of the chair and leaned back on his hands. “Consider this a break from your regularly scheduled torture.”

“ _That’s_ what’s supposed to get me to talk.” Sam made a rough, bitter sound that might’ve been a laugh. “They think I’ll trust you more because I know you, but I don’t fucking know you, Gabriel. You’ve done nothing but lie to me since we met.”

“Cry me a river, Samalam, I was just doing my job. And this break? Not a tactic—I don’t want to do this. I hate these puffed up suits just as much as you.”

EASY, GABRIEL.

_Shut your whore mouth, Zach._

Sam’s expression twisted. “You like them enough to work for them.”

“My options have been shockingly limited, considering that’s more or less what I was built to do.” Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Or do you push your tablet to follow its dreams, too?”

“You’re full of shit. Everybody has a choice, even angels. You could’ve let me go.”

“Spoken like a true human. ‘It’s not _our_ fault you’re government property!’ Which is fair, I guess—as we all know, robots evolved alongside humankind from single-celled gears and practically _begged_ to serve you. It’s just the natural order of things, isn’t it?”

“ _You could’ve let me go_!” This time when Sam strained in his seat, he shook the chair. “You could’ve _warned_ me, you could’ve—” he cut himself off, setting his teeth. “For you, it was just a job. But you made me… you made me fall for a fucking machine. You made me think you cared about me—that you _could_ care. Talk all you want about being built for this, but you didn’t have to be that cruel, Gabriel, you know you didn’t.”

Gabriel tucked his legs under himself so he was sitting on his heels. Not because he was uncomfortable, but for something to fill the dead space around him.

“See,” he said after a moment’s pause, “this is where you’re supposed to ask me whether it was all a lie.”

Sam just stared at him, bleeding fury and hurt.

“Don’t you want to know?”

Sam laughed, but his eyes were wetter than ever. “I don’t really care. I’m not saying a damn thing, so I’m dead either way. And either way, it’s your fault.”

There was something thin about the silence in the interrogation room. As if it were aching to be broken even as it cornered you. Gabriel broke it like the surface of water, swallowed up by the sound of what he said next.

“Y’know, we don’t need _you_ to talk.” He deliberately didn’t meet Sam’s gaze, focusing instead on the crease between his brows. “We know you have an accomplice at the border. Charlene Bradbury… you were going to meet her tonight.”

“Who—”

“Don’t play dumb, Sam. How do you think we knew to follow you? Bradbury screwed up, and that screw up put us on your perky tail.” Gabriel stood and smiled. “If you won’t talk, she will.”

Sam shook his head frantically. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do. I know you do. And I know that those stones are Grace, and seeing as you told me you don’t know how to code your apartment, I’m willing to bet Bradbury knows about them too. _Somebody_ made that box, and she’s one of the best in the business.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam repeated, slow and quiet.

“Well, I think you’re lying, so it really doesn’t matter whether you know her or not. They’re _going_ to take her, and they’re going to hurt her.”

The chair creaked alarmingly as Sam threw his weight against it, growling deep in his chest. "She doesn't know anything!" he shouted. "Just leave her alone, you fucking monsters, just—" He slumped, his shoulders shaking and hair falling forward over his bruised face.

Gabriel sighed. "I swear, there's no talking to you. I _told_ you how you could make this easier on yourself, and what do you do?" He threw up his hands. "I can't help you unless you give me something to work with, Sam."

"I don't _have_ anything for you to work with," Sam snapped, lifting his head. "I barely know her, but she doesn't deserve to be caught up in this Machiavellian crap. And she sure as shit doesn't deserve to have _your_ presence inflicted on her!"

"Oh, ouch, cuttin' deep now, aren't we?" Gabriel paused. He played the recording of Sam’s laugh again—ran through sensory memories of ( _touch taste smell Sam_ ) past interactions—all involuntarily, like zaps of current begging ground at the end of a frayed wire. Like his body was overcorrecting for the fact that he’d never be able to experience those things again. There had to be a way out of this, a way to fix the breaks in Sam’s skin, to ensure Zachariah kept his ferrety teeth to himself. Gabriel’s brain scrolled through odds and options, crawling upwards from a base of pinesap and shampoo.

 _Fuck it_.

"Sam… you know how angels talk to each other, don't you?"

Sam sneered, lip curling off bloodied teeth. "Sure, you’re hooked up to that telepathic gossip chain, right?"

“And we can turn it on and off whenever we like." He tapped a finger against his temple. "Mine's on right now, and tuned to the stiff who was in here last. He's listening to every word we say."

Sam spat blood on the floor. "Give him my love."

Gabriel broadcasted an approximation of finger guns and a wink in Zachariah's direction and shut down his transmitter. “Aaand now my outgoing’s on silent. He can’t hear a thing."

Sam tried to shrug, not an easy feat as tied down as he was. "So... what, now you can mock me in private?"

“Now I can tell you how I plan on getting you out of here.”

And that—that right there. That was probably the stupidest decision Gabriel had made in nearly a hundred and forty years of existence.

His heart, or approximation thereof, clenched at the blank hopelessness in Sam’s eyes at the promise of escape. The young man shifted in his binds with a sharp wince, and Gabriel reflexively catalogued his microexpressions to determine his pain levels. _Goddammit, kid, why did you have to be so stubborn?_

“Why should I believe you? Or believe that you turned off anything at all?” Sam sounded so numb, so angry and defeated. “How do I know this isn’t another trick?”

“Believe what you want. You’ll find out soon enough.”

Somewhere behind them in the artful dark, Zachariah pounded at the door. Gabriel jerked a thumb in the direction of the noise, grinning.

“See, that right there, is that the knock of a happy angel?” He began pacing in front of the chair. “I’m gonna go down to the border, tell Zachariah I’m looking to lean on Bradbury. Convince her I’m a friend of yours, y’know? They’ll think I faked cutting a deal with you—meanwhile, I’ll cut a deal with Bradbury for real, come back for you, and smuggle you out of Eden with her help. The only thing I need is for you to tell me where this black Grace came from and what it’s doing to the infected angels. How does that sound?”

Sam only stared, mouth twisting. Unshed tears sat on his lashes, glinting in the light like stars. “It sounds like a trap,” he said, but he didn’t seem certain.

“It sure does, I’ll give you that.” Gabriel stopped pacing, took a long step towards Sam. “But it’s also the only real offer you’re gonna get.”

That brittle quiet came again as Sam deliberated. Gabriel silently begged him to hurry, to make a decision before the sheer inanity of the plan sunk in and Gabriel was forced to change his mind.

After a long couple of minutes, Sam shook his head, voice breaking as he spoke. “They’ll kill us. Even if you’re telling the truth, they’ll fi-figure out what I did and…”

“Sam, Sam, hey.” Gabriel reached out and curled a finger under his chin, lifting his face gently. “Nobody needs to know.”

Sam jerked his chin out of Gabriel’s grasp. “No, just you. And you haven’t exactly been proven trustworthy lately.”

More quiet, and Gabriel wondered whether the engulfing blackness of the room mightn’t be having an effect on him too. He straightened, squared his shoulders, fixed his eyes on a point of dark somewhere behind Sam.

Whole hog seemed to be the only way to go.

“I was responsible for the first Breach,” he said. Looked down and wagged his eyebrows at the sudden upjerk of Sam’s head. “You heard me. About fifteen years after the border went up, I figured out how to bust a hole in it. I thought I’d find Michael and Lucifer—or at least get away from Equin. I wasn’t kidding when I said I hated them, Sam, the fuckers are creepy. They’d almost taken over by default by that point, since they owned the angels and the Grace technicians and most of the technology that was keeping Eden up and running. They’d put out the Nu angels and were phasing out the Pre-Falls and everything I’d actually given a flying fuck about had almost all disappeared. So I decided to leave.” He felt his expression harden before he had a chance to direct it. “But I let something in when I did.”

“A demon,” Sam said quietly.

“Not quite. It wasn’t so much a mutated animal as it was just a really broken angel. A Pre-Fall named Kali—she hadn’t joined Lucifer, but she’d wound up trapped on the wrong side of the border all the same.” Gabriel’s fingers twitched, crawling with the memory of reaching towards her. “We were friends. Before. But half her skin was missing, she was bleeding Grace, she didn’t even recognize me. She pushed through the hole I’d made, she was _screaming_ …” He shook his head. “When she came through, these tendrils of code started spreading across the border, like cracks. They disappeared afterward, but I’m pretty sure they led to the weak spots where the other Breaches happened. Moving cracks.

“The guards arrived, they put Kali down. I played it off like I’d just been out for a stroll when she broke through, and no one was ever the wiser. I didn’t try to leave again.” Gabriel offered a thin smile. “So. There you go. My deepest, darkest secret, known only to the two of us.” (Well, Charlotte knew, but that was beside the point.) “I’d say that’s a fair bit of quid pro quo.”

Sam’s lip curled. “How do you know I won’t just use all that against you?”

“I don’t—you could, very easily, and I’d have to answer for it. How do _you_ know I won’t break you out of here?” Gabriel shrugged. “Trust is a risk, Sam. And I just placed a whole lot in you.”

Zachariah beat on the door again, and Gabriel’s brain was suddenly flooded with an uncharacteristically vulgar transmission. He wiggled a pinkie in his ear, wincing. “Yeesh. That guy needs to watch his fucking language.”

Another knock, more forceful this time.

Sam shifted in his seat, cringing as his binds rubbed against wounds on his arms. “It grows. The black Grace… we’re not sure how, but it grows out of the ground, or out of dead trees, like a fungus.” He spoke in a monotony, staring at his knees. “Beyond the border. It’s infectious, too. Poisons humans, angels, animals… twists them, makes them all into monsters. I mean, we all know stuff changed out there after the Fall, but this is different. Violent. I… I was supposed to be looking for a way to reverse the effects, ‘cause nobody out there has the tech.”

Gabriel almost forgot to speak. “And the Gadreels?”

“We infected border guards to see how fast it spread in an unaffected area.” Sam shrugged. “People out there tried snatching Grace and border code sequences to create quarantines. But in most places it was too late, the air was already rotten. The black stuff still grew. Here… it’s much slower.”

“It’s been over a century since the Fall, how the fuck did _anyone_ survive out there this long?”

Sam smiled thinly. “It wasn’t always like this, apparently. The black Grace started forming after the Fall—just another byproduct of the fallout. But until recently it only grew in particular spots, and people knew where not to go. Now it’s everywhere.”

 

 _It’s been fifteen years since the border went up, since his brothers went silent, but Lucifer still sends him a message that night. Flicker in his mind, like static, like heat. A whisper over a broken line, soft—_ can you can you can you hear me?

Luci? Lucifer, I’m here.

—can you can you can you—

I’m _here_.

 _Gabriel sits in a lit room bright as day, but his vision goes black. Nothing before him but black, deep and velvet. Deep and velvet, darkness and heat—_ can you can you can you hear me, brother?

I can’t see—

—It’s divine out here, brother, come join me. It’s so peaceful, so quiet, so—

Luci, what—?

_Quiet, bright, and Lucifer never speaks to him again. Charlotte wonders, the next day, whether her sons felt sick in the night. Raphael wonders, privately, whether Gabriel remembers the itch of black static in his head._

 

Gabriel kept his gaze steady on the feet of Sam’s chair as the memory surfaced for the first time in years. The heavy ink-dark of the black Grace overlapped with the velvet of Lucifer’s communiqué and _click_. Of course. Of _course_ Lucifer would have looked for another source of power after being cut off from Charlotte’s Grace. And if he’d managed to contact his brothers across the border so soon after the Fall…

“When an angel gets infected,” he asked slowly, “how long do they last?”

Sam furrowed his brow. “They don’t seem to burn out, if that’s what you’re asking. At least not as far as we can tell.”

_So Lucifer could still be functional._

When their brother had failed to contact them again, Gabriel and Raphael assumed that Lucifer had shut down. Perhaps his message had proven too much for his broken parts, perhaps he’d been forcibly totalled, but either way all attempts to reconnect to his frequency were met with dead air from then on. But maybe… maybe it had something to do with the black Grace. Maybe he was still out there, just cut off from communications due to incompatible parts.

“All right,” he chirped. “Thanks, kiddo. I’ve got what I need.”

Sam’s frown deepened, his eyes anxious and vulnerable. “Yeah, and now what?”

“Now I do what I promised.” Gabriel winked. “I work on busting you out.”

“Sure.”

“Like I said, believe what you want. But keep your head up, okay? I swear, Sam, I’m coming back.”

Sam lifted his chin with a small, defiant twitch of his lips, exposing mouth-shaped bruises on his throat that had definitely _not_ been left there by Zachariah. Gabriel grinned at him, ignoring the way his hands felt abruptly too empty.

“See ya on the other side.” With a two-fingered salute, Gabriel stepped out of the light and towards the pounding door.

 

Gabriel lighted by the scrubland strip beyond Bromley’s edge shortly after explaining a heavily edited version of his plan to a furious Zachariah. The Inquisitor had been loath to relinquish any control to Gabriel, but even he had to admit that faking a double-cross was a good way to extract information from Sam and Bradbury. Which was great, since his compliance would make the eventual triple-cross much easier to pull off.

With his transmitter still dark, Gabriel made his way towards Bradbury’s outpost. Camouflaged Gadreels surrounded the squat building, the outlines of their bodies shimmering vaguely in the moonlight. Gabriel remained visible. His gaze flickered to the guards as he passed them—Zachariah had notified them of Gabriel’s arrival, and had instructed them not to interfere no matter what he did. It had been an arbitrary request on Gabriel’s part, really. He was still debating between two possible plans two feet from the outpost door, and had no idea whether or not the Gadreels would be disturbed at all. But it was fun to give Zachariah orders. There was something magical about the way the snivelling little bastard pretended to be unbothered by Gabriel’s complete lack of respect for his authority.

The outpost was about forty percent glass, the same opaque black as the windows in the Library—the rest was dull, pitted concrete. The seams between the two materials had a raw quality that made the entire building look half-finished, slapped together like a shoddy prefab. Gabriel knocked on a door that didn’t quite seem attached to its frame, activating manual tear ducts and adjusting his facial chromatophores to make himself appear blotchy from crying.

A slat in the door slid open, a pair of wide blue eyes peering out at him.

“State your name and business.” The way Bradbury’s voice lisped and lilted almost made it sound like a question.

“Gabe, Gabe Pratt.” Gabriel gave his cheek a rough wipe. “I’m a… a friend of Sam Winchester’s.”

Bradbury’s eyes narrowed. “Gabe? Not one-night-stand Gabe?”

“I—yeah, one-night-stand Gabe.” _Did he just tell everyone to call me that_?

“Holy crap, Sam commed me that he was seeing you again, but…” Bradbury blinked. “No, that’s for later. Come in.”

She slid the slat back into place and opened the door, grabbing Gabriel’s wrist and yanking him inside. The outpost was different than he’d expected—one wall was almost entirely taken up by a glassless window, pressed directly against a sealed patch of border. Thin metal tubes penetrated the Grace, snaking back inside the building, along the walls until they sank into the wide touchscreen tabletop that dominated the room. Beside it was a plush desk chair. The rest of the building consisted of a tiny kitchen, a bathroom door, and filing cabinets, every surface littered with kitschy stickers, movie posters, and collectable figurines.

“Welcome to Chez Charlie,” Bradbury said with a flourish. “The day shift and weekend people don’t like my taste in décor, but hey, I’m this outpost’s head technician, so those doofs can’t do anything about anything.” 

Up close, she looked much younger than he’d thought—maybe about Sam’s age.  A quick check of her file confirmed his guess. _Whoever’s behind all this, I hope you feel damn good about sending kids to do your dirty work_.

“A woman after my own heart.” Gabriel sniffed around his smile, remembering halfway through that he was supposed to be distraught. “Look, we need to talk—”

“Yeah, we do.” Bradbury—Charlie—was suddenly stonefaced. “Where’s Sam? And what are _you_ doing here?”

“Gadreels broke into his apartment.” Gabriel affected a choke. “They took him, I couldn’t stop them, and they just fucking _took him_ … they brought me in for questioning but I… I didn’t…” He trembled. “I lied and told them we just hook up from time to time so they’d let me go and I could get help. Sam said to find you. Right before they…”

Charlie patted his shoulder and led him to the desk chair, plopping him down in it while he continued to shake. “It’s okay, man. It’ll be okay. The Gadreels, did they take anything else from the house?”

“A… box, a big black box. I didn’t see what was in it, but it looked coded.”

She closed her eyes. “Aw, shit.”

Gabriel frowned. “What’s going on? This has gotta be some sort of mistake… Sam hasn’t _done_ anything. You can help him, right?”

Charlie chewed on her lip. She’d gone paler, and her fingers were tangled together in front of her chest. “I… I don’t know. Shit. Nobody was supposed to find that box, and now they have evidence that Sam—uh.” She clenched her fingers tighter until they were marbled pink and white. “Sam has… done stuff. But he hasn’t done anything _wrong_ , Gabe, I promise.”

“Please.” Gabriel turned his best puppy-eyes on her. “Please, I have to know. I don’t care if he killed someone, I just want to bring him home.”

“Wow, break my heart, why don’t you?” She exhaled and squared her shoulders. “The short and crappy of it is that I’m not supposed to help him. There’s a house rule against rescue missions.”

“ _Whose_ house?” Gabriel snapped his teeth as he spoke. This part, at least, he didn’t have to fake. “Who the fuck are you so afraid of you’ll leave Sam to die just because they said so?”

Charlie grinned. “I said I’m not supposed to, not that I won’t. I’m just not gonna have any backup, so chances of things going south are pretty freaking high.”

“You’ll have _some_ backup.” Gabriel set his mouth. “I’m not leaving him.”

“Well, high five for slightly better odds! And might I just say, that’s probably the most romantic gesture I’ve ever seen—and I once had a girlfriend who set up an after-shift picnic so we could watch the sunrise together on my birthday.”

“Midnight riverside sex, for us.”

Charlie gave him an approving nod. “Right, look, I can’t leave my post before my shift’s up without rousing suspicion, so we’d better wait until morning to do anything. Until then… daring escape plan time.”

“Oh, no.” Gabriel crossed his arms, leaning back in the chair. “I wanna save Sam, but I’m not risking my life until I know what’s going on.”

“Uh, it’s probably safer if you don’t—”

“No, it isn’t. I’m ex-Servus Dei, Charlie; I know as well as you do how these assholes operate. If we’re caught trying to break someone out of an Equin hold, and we’ve got no cavalry coming, we’re already dead. They’ll choke us for intel and then they’ll choke us with blasters, no matter what we say.”  

Charlie walked around the table, and Gabriel spun in the chair to follow her movement. She picked a mug off the rim, took a deep swallow from it and sighed. “I guess if I’m already breaking the rules…” She shrugged. “Good thing you’re sitting down. So… y’know how there was people on the other side of the border when Eden was created? As in most of the world? Well, some of their descendants are still out there. And Sam and I, we’ve got… we’ve got family out of town. We smuggle stuff out to them sometimes—bits of useful code, medical supplies, seeds—and sometimes we smuggle stuff in, too. Like the contents of that box. Nothing bad. We have good intentions, I swear, we’re trying to make something to help the people outside. But it’s not… _entirely_ safe? Or legal, like, at all.”

Grateful that he’d decided to keep his transmitter down, Gabriel feigned surprise. He wondered whether Charlie was going to tell him anything more about the black Grace—he kind of hoped she didn’t, he liked the advantage of knowing more than she thought.

“So you’re like… rum runners minus the booze, and you just… carted over some unexpectedly heavy shit, that’s all?” 

Another shrug. “Basically, yeah.”

Gabriel nodded slowly. “Okay. Wow, okay.”

“I’m sorry, I know it’s a lot.” Charlie set down her mug. “Especially since you’re, y’know, Sam’s boyfriend. S’gotta come as a bit of a shock.”

Gabriel winced. “I’m not his… fuck, I don’t know what we were.”

“Hey.” Charlie came forward and put a hand on his arm. “Don’t talk like that, Gabe. You’re not leaving him, remember? And neither am I—we’ll bring him home, I promise.”

Thankful that she’d misinterpreted his use of the past tense and annoyed with himself for slipping up in the first place, Gabriel leaned into the touch. “Thank you.”

Charlie grabbed a stool from the kitchen and dragged it over to the table. She played around with the table for a moment, fingers dancing across touch-keys and dragging items across the surface—“Autopilot: engage,” she whispered—before sitting back down and bringing her palms down on her knees with a smack.

“So. Now you know what you know… daring escape plan time?”

Gabriel smiled. “Daring escape plan time.”

 

It was difficult to plot Sam’s rescue, but not for the reasons Gabriel had been expecting. He had a scanned blueprint of the barracks encoded in his memory, and could’ve projected it from his Third Eye with little effort—however, Charlie’s trust and any additional information Gabriel could tease out of her was contingent on her belief in Gabe Pratt, the very human not-an-android. Gabe Pratt had an excellent eidetic memory, but his account of the barracks’ layout had to be subject to some human error to be believable.

Charlie reasoned that getting into the building would be fairly easy. The barracks were her point of contact, should she ever discover suspicious or otherwise alarming activity during her watch. Though she’d never had cause to go in save for an initial briefing two years prior, she had a free pass to come and go as she pleased. All she had to do was claim to have information. Gabriel just had to pretend to be her witness. Then it was a simple matter of slipping the guards and finding Sam’s cell. Of course, that part of the plan was purely for Charlie’s benefit. Before they left, Gabriel would send a quick alert to Zachariah so he and the Gadreels knew to play dumb. They’d be conveniently left alone by the guards, Gabriel would lead Charlie to Sam under the guise of dumb luck, and then—well, that was when things would get really tricky.

When Gabriel asked how she planned on getting them out, Charlie opened her jacket, revealing a handblaster tucked into an inner pocket.

“And for me?”

“Backup under a trick tile in the bathroom.” She winked. “Don’t worry, I’ve gotcha.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow, now more curious than anything else. “And if we run out of charge? Don’t tell me you’ve got an antique like that peashooter Sam pulled on the guards.”

“Damn, I _told_ him that thing was useless against angels,” Charlie muttered. “Poor dumb-dumb just didn’t want to be in the system. But don’t worry… I’ve got something.” She fiddled with her sleeve a moment until a silver blade peeked out—long and narrow and made of heavy steel. It looked like the last-resort blades that archangels and Militaries had embedded in their wrists, except it was covered in barely-visible sigils.

“Designed the sequences myself,” she said proudly. “Stab an angel with this and it’ll scramble their Grace. There’s a bunch beyond the border—they’ll take out a broken ‘bot in one hit, and handicap any of those Grace-mutated demons, but I’ve never tried it on a functional Nu. Guess tonight’s its field test!”

Gabriel frowned. “Why didn’t Sam defend himself with _that_?” _Why didn’t he use it on me?_

Charlie shook her head. “No idea. I don’t even know if he kept it on him—I gave him one, but…”

Eager to get off the subject, Gabriel handwaved the question and returned to planning their escape route.

They were just coming to the issue of where to go after leaving the barracks when something started beeping. Charlie’s face went white—well, whiter than it already was—and she knocked over her stool in her haste to loom over the table.

“Craaap,” she muttered, hands flying into action. “Crap, crap, _shit_.”

“Do I want to know?”

Charlie spat a stray lock of hair out of her mouth. “Uh, probably not, but you’re _here_ , so I don’t really have a choice.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Gabriel caught sight of the border flickering. He turned, watching as the shimmering air twisted and squirmed before his eyes, distorting the world beyond it. Then the twisting stopped, and the border became translucent again—no, transparent. Gabriel could still make out thin streams of code moving across the space, but they were barely there. Threads of light blinking in and out of existence.

This was the weekly structural weakness that Charlie had forgotten to disguise. This was what Sam had been coming to see. It must’ve been how they’d been passing supplies across the border.

Gabriel opened his mouth to speak, but before he could make a sound, a pair of heads popped into view. Two men unfolded on the other side of the border window, both tall and broad-shouldered. One had short sandy-brown hair, green eyes, and a strong jaw that belied his almost feminine mouth. The other…

Well. Wasn’t that just peachy fucking keen.

The other man wasn’t a man at all. It was a Castiel.

 

_“Th-this is C-Castiel. They’re one of the new Border Militaries,” Charlotte says with a strained smile. “Equin wants to m-make sure I’m escorted in style. Y’know, so p-people know what line to t-trust now.”_

_Gabriel laughs. “Oh my god, for a visit to the Trans’? That’s barely a ten minute drive!”_

_“I know. B-but they insisted, so, uh, I guess it’s important.”_

_The Castiel nods, all big blue eyes and soft mouth. They’re far too pretty for a Military model, Gabriel thinks. “It is good to meet you, Archangel. I am honoured to have the privilege of serving you and Artifex Shurley today.”_

_Gabriel nudges Castiel’s shoulder, grinning. “Good to meet you, little brother. And please, call me Gabriel.”_

After nearly two months in Charlotte’s employ, that Castiel had been sent to the border. Gabriel had been between missions at the time, and had gotten to know them well—they’d been surprisingly adaptable, for a Nu Military, and had even shown signs of picking up something of a sense of humour. But Charlotte had hated having them around. Amelia Novak had modelled the line after her recently deceased husband, James, and Charlotte found it difficult to look at the angel without wanting to cry. In retrospect, Gabriel admired the fact that she’d held out as long as she had. At the time he’d simply hated her for sending him away.

When the Castiel line had been terminated three years prior, Gabriel mourned his friend—the only one of the Novak doppelgängers he’d actually met. This Castiel was different; they wore natural, messy dark hair, likely an implant. They had a nearly imperceptible seam around one eye, as if it had been replaced at some point. Still, seeing a Castiel staring at him from across the border was like seeing a ghost.

At least, until they narrowed their eyes and growled, “Gabriel.”

_Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me._

The sandy haired man glanced between Castiel and Gabriel. “ _Gabriel_? As in the Archangel?”

Castiel’s gaze was hard. “The very same.”

Sandy looked suddenly furious and pulled a handblaster from somewhere out of sight, training it on Gabriel. “Charlie, what the fuck is going on here?”

A hand clapped on Gabriel’s shoulder, and cold steel pressed against his throat. “I don’t know.” Charlie’s voice shook with anger. “But I’m beginning to think Sam’s boyfriend might be the reason the Gadreels got the drop on him.”

“They _what_?” Sandy stepped forward, pushing the barrel of his blaster through the thinned Grace of the border. “I swear to god, you winged fuck, if _anything_ happens to my brother—”

“Your brother?” Gabriel laughed. “Oh, that’s just perfect. Always a pleasure to meet the in-laws, Dean, especially since I thought you were dead! Well, not really.” He shifted his gaze to the android at the elder Winchester’s side. “And Castiel. I actually _did_ think you were dead. How’s AWOL life treating you?”

Castiel continued to glare, jaw clenching. Dean’s gaze flickered back to them.

“You don’t have to answer to him, Cas,” he said, too quiet for Charlie to hear.

Gabriel clicked his tongue. “Cas? Oh, that’s way better than Cassie—that’s what I used to call them.”

“Him,” Cas snapped.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. Nu angels might have designs that often skewed more masculine or feminine, depending on the model, but they were functionally sexless and most didn’t tend to care any which way about gender or how others identified them. Castiel—Gabriel’s Castiel—had certainly never cared.

(Hell, despite their silicon cocks, the archangels had never cared much either. Gabriel often found himself caught somewhere between male and femaleness, though he liked to keep his pronouns, and Raphael and Lucifer had frequent periods of womanhood. Michael hadn’t liked to talk about it.)

“Picked a side, have we?” Gabriel kept his tone light in spite of the blade at his throat.

“Learned that I was already on a side, yes.” Castiel reached through the border and pulled himself through the window. Dean followed suit, his gun steady. “I understand that’s abnormal for an angel of my class. I don’t care. I _am_ abnormal.”

“Yeah, well, I’d figured that, rebel scum.”

Dean cocked the blaster—it whirred hot in his hand. “Don’t you fucking talk to him like that.”

“Relax, bucko, it’s a joke.”

Charlie’s blade pressed harder against his skin. “I’m guessing your transmitter’s on? You’ve already sent a report to whoever’s at the barracks and now they’re gonna bring us in, right? Dammit, I was so _happy_ Sam found someone, y’know? I thought you’d be good for him, I didn’t even think twice letting you in. And now because of you he’s as good as _dead_.” She sounded like she was choking back tears, and Gabriel didn’t blame her. Gabriel almost felt bad for her.

“No,” he said, “he isn’t.”

“Damn right he isn’t,” Dean snarled. “‘Cause you’re gonna take us to him. You’re gonna bust him out, or we’ll fry your fucking circuits right here.”

Gabriel sighed. “Exactly. That’s exactly what’s going to happen. And you know why? Because that’s what I damn well _came_ _here_ _for_.”

Castiel cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

“Why do you think I bothered coming to you, Charlie?” He tried to turn his head to meet her eye, but her grip moved to the base of his neck and tightened. “Ow, okay, unnecessary force much? Look, Sam already told me everything you did. I don’t need you for intel, I need you for the giant fucking hole you can punch in the border. Sam’s not safe in Eden anymore—and neither are you, for that matter.”

Dean lowered the gun slightly, still aiming to kill but with less enthusiasm. He frowned. “What are you saying?”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “What do you _think_ I’m saying? I got attached to the kid, and I don’t wanna watch him die. I’m still not leaving him, Charlie. I just needed you to trust me.” He paused. “Oh, and I’m dead air right now, nobody else knows what’s going on. APkA thinks I came here to trap you.”

“You could still be doing that,” Castiel pointed out.

“Why does nobody ever believe I have good intentions? Is it my long history of lies and false identities? No, that’s impossible.”

Dean tilted his head towards Castiel. “Is he always like this?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

They were quiet for a long, tense minute—the most one-sided Mexican standoff since Mexico was all-but totalled by an archangelic brawl. Oddly enough, of the two people Gabriel could actually see, Dean looked the most like he was considering what the archangel had said. Perhaps it was desperation to save his brother, perhaps he genuinely believed Gabriel’s story. Either way, Gabriel knew who to nudge.

“Dean,” he said softly, “please. I wanna save him as much as you do. Trust me or not, I’m the best chance you have of getting Sam out of those barracks.” 

Another heavy pause, and Dean looked at Charlie over Gabriel’s shoulder. Then he turned and met Castiel’s eye. They exchanged a look that Gabriel couldn’t even begin to decipher before Dean finally lowered the gun with a nod.

“So,” he said. “What’s the plan?”


	10. Blackout

Levi had left Charlotte shortly after showing her the black Grace and what it was doing to the Gadreels. He’d suggested—firmly—that she stay in her room until he returned with further information as to how APkA wanted to proceed. Charlotte _had_ had every intention of doing as she was told… but Gabriel had a tendency to bring out her rebellious streak. She’d figured that taking Gabriel to the black Grace and convincing him to do his damn job would quash the feeling. And it had, for the time being. But Levi didn’t come back. He sent her a couple of reassuring transmissions and had a Gadreel bring her _World Foods_ takeout from Bromley, but he didn’t come back. If it hadn’t been for Hannah, Charlotte was sure she would’ve come untethered like she often had in the penthouse. Alone, floating away in her mind, rootless and barely there until reality dragged her into herself again. She felt it tugging at her, the blur and weightlessness, but it receded at the sound of Hannah’s voice.

So when she woke up the next morning, gritted over with sleep and still sans her minder, Charlotte felt angry more than anything else.

“They brought me _all the way here_ ,” she muttered, pacing the floor. “N-now something’s actually happening and they’re just leaving me to rot? Gabriel’s b-been dark since last night, Levi isn’t telling me anything… I-I can’t believe I was s-stupid enough to think th-they m-might—might actually treat me a-any different out h-here.”

Hannah sat motionless at the dining table. “Perhaps you should go look for Levi yourself, Charlotte?”

“Great idea. And as s-soon as I find him, I’ll get shooed back here and told to wait again.” She stopped at the table, took one last swig from the Blasto’s! bottle she’d opened yesterday. It’d gone flat and warm and tasted vaguely of impending death. “Why.”

“Why what, Charlotte?”

“J-just… _why_. Why d-did they b-bother bringing me here? Wh-why is this m-my life? What… what did I _do_ to d-deserve this—this endless p-parade of fucking… waiting rooms and p-people tr-treating me like a child?”

 She staggered to the bed. Hit the edge, felt her body sag heavy around tired bones. She stared at the mattress blindly, fixating on a sun-stained patch of discolouration on the sheets. Hannah crept up behind her. Charlotte felt a curious tug at her mind, like a kid pulling at their mother’s skirt. 

“Charlotte,” Hannah said, “I think it would be wise for you to take a seat and rest.”

“Yeah.” Charlotte did, over the sunspot. “Y’know, I used to believe my parents when they said God had a plan for me. That he cared. S-so I used to trace bad things that happened to me, t-trace ‘em back and forward until I found the reason. Like, I scraped my knee, but, uh, then I knew not to jump off moving swings into gravel. So it was a l-lesson, right? Kept doing that for years… know when I stopped?”

“When?”

“Right before the Fall… L-Lucifer hit me.”

Hannah made a face. “He did?”

“N-n-not hard, I swear, didn’t… didn’t even hurt.” Charlotte rubbed her arm. “B-but he was pissed. Said, uh, s-said he couldn’t believe I’d let m-my creations be treated like chattel. A-and I… I-I-I _got_ it, I _agreed_ , but by that point it was too late. Equin owned me, th-they were mass-producing Pre-Falls, e-everyone had an angel. S-so Lucifer hit me, h-he _hated_ me, and I finally saw what I’d done… and I c-couldn’t do anything about it. There was no reason, no l-lesson, I t-tried to do something good and I fucked the world b-beyond repair. Th-the Fall… it was m-my fault and-and-and I c-couldn’t…” She choked and swallowed, squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t know if I believe in God anymore. B-but if he’s out there, and he’s paying attention, the guy must hate my guts.”

Out of the dark, Hannah gave Charlotte’s mind another weak stroke. Charlotte opened her eyes and saw the angel staring at her with an expression like confusion playing on their features.

“I understand God to be the personification of a divine Creator,” they said. “Is this correct?”

“I… yeah, I guess. It d-depends on your upbringing. I always th-thought of God as more like…” Charlotte waved a hand, “universal order in a half-shell. Or something. Why?”

“Well, you are _our_ Creator, and you have said yourself that angels have deviated from your original plan in terms of how we’re programmed and used. So is it not within the realm of possibility, then, that you yourself may well have deviated from _your_ Creator’s plan?”

Charlotte frowned. “Wh-what are you getting at?”

Hannah held out a hand. “Perhaps there is no reason _why_ because your God didn’t expect this to happen to you. In that case, there’s also no reason for you to endure it as your lot in life.”

Hannah’s palm was smooth and only barely lined—their skin was like porcelain, poreless and white. They still wore their wig, and the contrast between the dark hair and their pale complexion made them appear fragile. But when Charlotte placed her hand in theirs, she felt only Hannah’s strength.

She hauled herself up and wrapped her arms around them, burying her face in the crook of Hannah’s neck.

 Hannah was still. They were always still when Charlotte hugged them, but Charlotte didn’t care. She turned her head slightly, catching her nose on Hannah’s throat. She was so goddamn tired, so tired, and she wasn’t really processing what Hannah had said. She took a breath. The angel’s skin smelled faintly of candle smoke, which made no sense but was pleasant nonetheless.

“Charlotte?”

“Yeah?”

“This feels incorrect.”

Charlotte pulled back quick as a startled cat. She felt her cheeks grow hot and began to stammer out an apology before Hannah reached out and placed their hands on her waist.

“No,” they said. “I could not comfortably move my arms due to the way you held me.”

And they hugged Charlotte right around the middle.

They pressed their cheek against hers, warm and soft and porcelain smooth. Charlotte hesitated before snaking her arms back around Hannah’s shoulders, sinking into the angel once more. A heavy peace suffused her, prickling light in the soles of her feet and cozy

( _like a hot bath_ )

in her stomach. Hannah’s frequency gentled at her mind again, and this time it felt bolder. And all at once, so did Charlotte.

“Okay. We’ll go look for Levi ourselves.”

 

 

 

“Never mind, I give up. L-let’s just go back.” Charlotte beelined for the wall and flattened her back up against it. Closed her eyes against the overhead lights, which were flickering dimly but just enough to be annoying. “This place is ridiculous. Why are there so many _hallways_? We’re not gonna find Levi… f-for all we know he’s not even in the building anymore.”

“Perhaps. But by my estimation, we have yet to search more than sixty percent of the barracks. We would do well to complete a full circuit before declaring the case hopeless.”

Charlotte opened one eye. “And I thought Gabriel was the only smartass angel.”

“I assure you, Charlotte, I was not employing sarcasm.” Hannah almost looked like they were smiling.

“Yeah, yeah, I get y-you. Smartass.”

She pushed off the wall and the two of them continued down the corridor, taking a sharp left on a whim when they came to the next fork. The turn led them into a narrow passage flanked by heavy doors—they looked reinforced, with touchpad locks beside them. Most were unlocked, green lettering on ticker screens above their frames declaring the rooms beyond them VACANT.

 _Cells_ , Charlotte thought. _Fuck, this must be where they’re keeping Winchester_.

I BELIEVE YOU’RE RIGHT.

Charlotte tripped on the flat ground, catching herself before she pitched too far forward. Once again, Hannah had received a thought that she hadn’t meant to project to them. It was beyond odd—that hadn’t happened in decades, and now twice in the span of a month, both times towards the same angel? Charlotte began to clench and unclench her hands at her sides, turning over worries in her head, between her fingers. Hannah didn’t seem to notice.

They spotted the Gadreels before they came to Winchester’s door. The guards nodded at Charlotte as she approached, standing stonefaced beneath the red OCCUPIED ticker screen.

“Th-this is, uh, this is W-Winchester’s cell?” She cocked a hip, resting her palms on both, but quickly scrambled out of the position. It was too loose. “Is G-Gabriel still, um, here—i-is he here?”

The Gadreels exchanged a look. “Archangel Gabriel left the interrogation room several hours ago, Artifex,” said the one on the left. “He departed for the border on Inquisitor Zachariah’s orders.”

_For the border? Crap, what are they planning?_

I WOULD ADVISE ENTERING THE ROOM, CHARLOTTE. Hannah came into step beside her. IT’S LIKELY THAT WINCHESTER OR THE INQUISITOR WILL HAVE MORE INFORMATION. 

_You kidding? You do realize that’s a fucking torture chamber, right?_

I AM NOT UNACCUSTOMED TO IMAGES OF TORTURE. I KNOW FROM MY MEMORY REELS OF THE FALL THAT YOU ARE NOT UNACCUSTOMED TO THEM, EITHER.

Charlotte frowned at her feet. _That doesn’t mean I wanna see it_.

I KNOW.

The Gadreels were staring at them, blank and waiting. Charlotte glanced at Hannah, watching the way their expression shifted. It was unrecognizable as portraying any single emotion, but twigged as an attempt to steel themselves.

Biting back a surge of anger, Charlotte raised her chin at the Gadreels. “L-let us in. Uh, p-please, I-I-I need to speak to, uh, to the Inquisitor.”

“Pardon us, Artifex, but you do not have the clearance to access an in-use interrogation room.”

“Oh, uh—”

DO NOT BACK DOWN, CHARLOTTE. I AM HERE.

Tight fists, sharp nails, and swallow. “Exsc-scuse me? I-I’m y-your A-Artifex Deus, a-a-and I’m t-telling you I want in.”

The Gadreel on the right shook its head. “We are sorry, Artifex. We do not mean to overrule—”

“Well, y-you are.” Charlotte crossed her arms, in part to hide how much her hands were shaking. “T-t-tell the Inquisitor I’m w-waiting, and I’m _not_ happy.”

The guards’ eyes went empty for a moment, then refocused. They said nothing—but soon enough came a click and whirr from the door, and the reinforced metal slid away smooth as water. Zachariah smiled as the door shut again behind him, irritation ripe in his smile and pre-programmed reverence buzzing in his head.

“Artifex,” he said, all honey and nails. “To what do I owe the honour?”

They’d had an open-casket funeral for Charlotte’s grandfather, and Charlotte, being twelve and feeling contrary and remembering what a terror Robert Edlund had once been (especially after Daddy ran off with Omar and Momma still refused to give Charlotte her maiden name), was loath to pay her respects. Finally, however, she’d been dragged to the front. His skin was grey and white, all ash against his black suit. When she saw his face she almost laughed—her grandfather’s dead mouth had been sewn into a peaceful smile. The expression looked so alien on his harsh, stern features. It was Momma’s smile, but eerie and slapped on the wrong face. Zachariah looked like a dead man, pale and waxy and done up in his black suit. He smiled like a dead man, too.

“I-I need to speak to you,” Charlotte took a step forward, “about, um, Gabriel.”

“Ah, yes, your wayward son.” Zachariah’s corpsey grin was replaced with a look of warm affection that was, as Charlotte’s Momma would’ve said, _as real as margarine is butter_.

“Y-yeah, him. H-he’s at the border? Wh-why, what happened?”

“Please, Artifex, don’t worry yourself.” The Inquisitor’s sugary tone grated at her ears. “Honestly, when I called him in I was afraid he would still be mooning after our little terrorist, but he surprised me. He actually managed to inspire a plan to bring in Bradbury and make Winchester talk by pretending to betray Equin, so I sent him down to the outpost to carry it out. That’s all.”

 Charlotte shifted her weight. “Oh. Okay, um…”

“Will that be all, Artifex? Please excuse my curtness, I have to attend to Winchester.”

I AM HERE.

Charlotte shook her head. “I-I-I want to, uh… I want to go in.”

She swore she could’ve heard a pin drop. Zachariah didn’t look flustered, but Charlotte could feel his off-kilterness tilting out of him in waves.

“I’m sorry, Artifex, I must’ve misheard you,” he said. “You say you want to… watch me question him?”

Did she? Technically speaking she’d gotten the information she’d wanted from Zachariah. Levi was her minder, Levi knew what she was supposed to do, what Raphael instructed her to do. She had nothing to do with Winchester, merely with his information regarding the black Grace. All the same, she thought of the look on Gabriel’s face when he’d finally decided to question his mark. She thought of Zachariah’s claim that Gabriel had agreed to double-cross him again. Curiously, she thought of Amelia Novak and her Castiels—an entire line of memorials to her dead husband, as far from his personality as possible, but capable of forming relationships all the same. New ones. Ones that hurt to break.

She knew in a moment, the way a mother knows, that Gabriel wasn’t planning on double-crossing Winchester. And she knew in a moment that she had to go in and see him for herself.

Charlotte squared her shoulders as best she could with her arms still crossed. “Yes,” she said. “Y-yes, I do.”

Zachariah led them inside, and as the door slid closed behind her Charlotte had to fight to keep herself from shutting her eyes against the sight before her. 

 _Gabriel was sent after a boy_ , she thought. Winchester was tall and broad and in good shape, that much was evident even as he sat bound to his chair. But his face—his head lolled against his shoulder, and his cheeks were fatted with youth. His eyes were unlined and full of an adolescent terror: primal and born out of the self-consciously hollow hope that maybe this time the monster won’t come back.

The monster rounded the chair and placed a hand on Winchester’s bare shoulder. The skin of it was red, like it had been flayed, or burned, or both. Winchester winced and hissed at the touch, and Zachariah tsked. 

“Now, Sam. That’s no way to greet God’s own Artisan, is it?”

Sam groaned. He blinked at Charlotte, frowning. “Y-y…” he swallowed. “You’re… it?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

He made a noise somewhere between a scoff and a wheeze. “I-it was… all you. All… because of… you.”

She nodded again, slower. “Yeah.”

Behind her, Hannah’s frequency jittered indignantly, and Charlotte gave their mind a stroke to calm them. _It’s okay; I’m okay_.

Zachariah was staring at her like he wanted to say something, but before he could, he stiffened and straightened up. “Lucky for you, Sam, it would appear your boyfriend has returned with Bradbury.” He smiled down at Sam in a parody of affection. “I’ll be back for you. Artifex, if you’ll allow me to escort you outside—”

Charlotte shook her head. “I’d like to stay here. I-i-if it’s, uh, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Here? Artifex, with all due respect, that’s highly unadvisable.”

“W-with all due respect, I-Inquisitor, I’m _pretty_ sure I outrank you. I-I’d like to talk to the kid.”

Zachariah quirked an eyebrow and squeezed Sam’s shoulder, causing the boy to let out a sharp, pained gasp. “Have fun, Winchester. Artifex.” He bowed his head and gave her an inter-angelic salute, capping the transmission with a soft, fluttering flourish that Charlotte had come to recognize as a gesture of deference. 

The moment he was gone, Sam let out a harsh breath and spat a thin spray of blood and wet air. He lifted his chin, and Charlotte could see all the wounds on his face. The split cheek and lip crusted with blood, the vibrant bruise across his temple. Zachariah had gotten him under the eyes, crescents of sigil-marks like cigarette burns, the skin around them red and taut. Charlotte could picture the Inquisitor looming over Sam, clutching his jaw in one hand and reminding his prisoner that he was one mistake away from burning him blind.

Sam coughed, a nasty, thick sound. “This… is all your fault.” He narrowed his eyes. “H-how are you still alive?”

Charlotte shrugged. “Grace. I think.” She gave a dry laugh. “A-after I built the archangels I was pretty much just… along for the ride.”

“The archangels… right, you built… Gabriel.”

She crooked a smile. “I did. And, uh…” _Hannah, no broadcasting please? You know how to turn it off?_

I DO. DONE, CHARLOTTE.

 _Thanks_. “A-and you’re waiting for h-him to come back, aren’t you?”

Sam huffed, dropped his eyes. “So e-everyone knows, right? He was… bullshitting me the… the whole time.”

Charlotte’s smile broadened. “F-from what I understand, he, um, told you he was gonna double-cross APkA, a-and he told APkA he was gonna double-cross you. L-listen, Sam, I know Gabe. H-he’s my son, s-sort of, and one of my best friends. Personally? I-I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.”

Sam met her gaze and frowned. Just stared at her for a full minute or so, jaw hitching visibly. Charlotte could see that he didn’t believe her. That he was afraid to believe her.

Brush at her arm, and Hannah stepped forward. They didn’t try to smile at Sam, or make any expression at all. But there was something soft in their eyes that seemed like a shot at comfort.

“Mr. Winchester,” they said, “did you feel that you formed a strong attachment to the Archangel during your time together?”

Sam’s frown deepened. Hannah waited.

“If you will allow me to keep speaking,” they went on after a moment, “from my brief observation of Archangel Gabriel, I inferred that he formed a strong attachment to you in spite of his intended mission. Did you experience the same emotions towards him?”

Pause, then Sam scoffed. “Doesn’t matter if I did. How could he care? He’s a f-fucking robot.”

“Angels are capable of forming bonds with their human companions if a stable relationship is established. Pre-Fall angels, including archangels, are much more sophisticated in that sense. It is entirely possible that Gabriel cares for you.”

Sam sneered and refused to meet Hannah’s eye. “A-and you’d know all… all about that, I guess?”

Hannah cocked their head. “I used to believe I was dysfunctional, Mr. Winchester. I have been unable to relate or form bonds with most of the humans I have met since I became operational. However.” They looked at Charlotte, and, crippled without their transmission on, attempted a twitchy little smile. “Now I believe I was simply intended to form one bond in particular.”  

Charlotte’s mouth fell open. Her cheeks flared hot, and she forgot for a long minute that she was in a torture chamber with a bloodied criminal. For a long minute, all she saw was Hannah. Delicate features and delicate hands and an open expression unindicative of any understanding of the weight of their words.

Unbidden, Charlotte thought of the ball of solid Grace in the Equin Tower, and the fact that Hannah ran on her blood. Unbidden, the warmth in her stomach turned sick.

She turned back to Sam, who was watching them with an infuriating curiosity. “Th-there you h-have it,” she said, too loudly. “G-Gabriel’s coming for you, Sam.”

It was then, in what was perhaps the most poetic moment of Charlotte’s life, that they all heard the explosion.

 

———

 

Dean thumbed off his comm and nodded at the empty air. “Right, Charlie’s made her move.”

“Thanks, cupcake, the earth-shattering kaboom didn’t tip me off.”

“Accidents happen, asshole. Just letting you know we’re on track.” Dean grunted. “Fuck this thing…”

Gabriel glanced over to see Dean fiddling with the tight silver choker around his neck. It was coded like Sam’s box had been, to repel angelic detection. One of Charlie’s gadgets, and the only reason Gabriel had managed to fly Dean back to the barracks without incident. Charlie had designed it (and the replicas she and Castiel were wearing) to fit her own narrower throat, and Dean found it immensely uncomfortable as a result. Gabriel had been giggling about it on and off for the past hour.

They’d been laying low on the barracks roof all that time, waiting for Charlie to set off her distraction. Now that she had, streams of Gadreels poured out of the roof access hatches across the complex from an invisible Gabriel and shrouded Dean, en route to investigate the explosion.

It wouldn’t be all of them, of course. That was where Castiel came in.

A series of smaller explosions started to go off, leading away from the barracks. At the limits of his vision, Gabriel could just make out something crackling around the Gadreels’ feet as they landed—minibombs puffing what Charlie called scramble-smoke. It wasn’t lethal like her blades; Gabriel had made her swear as much. But it would leave the Militaries confused and rambling for a while yet.

“All right, she’s smoking them,” Gabriel said. “Signal Cas.”

Dean did, and moments later another blast went off.

Castiel was positioned on the other side of the barracks, and closer to the building than Charlie. The explosion rattled Dean and Gabriel where they stood. 

A second squad of Gadreels deployed themselves, and by Gabriel’s estimate the barracks should’ve been mostly empty. Inside, Zachariah was being sent on a wild goose chase throughout the barracks, following Gabriel’s messages to meet him “in that one room” to fetch Charlie. Charlie, sweet Charlie, who had given Gabriel the gift of a locator jammer in the form of a goldplate ring.

 _I really should arrest her, probably. The woman’s a walking WMD_.

Gabriel watched Cas’ explosion site until the minibombs began to puff.

“Okay, big boy.” He clapped Dean on the shoulder (still invisible, causing Dean to startle and look hilariously offended). “Let’s go get your brother.”

Dean put a hand out, getting Gabriel in the face. “Hold on. Cas hasn’t commed the go-ahead yet.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes, purely for his own benefit. “So he hasn’t gotten to his beeper, big deal. I saw the scramble-smoke; he’s _fine_.”

“Yeah, according to who?” Dean snapped. “What, you think I’m gonna trust you to be my eyes, you tin-boned freak? No, when Cas says we’re good to go, then we go.”

“Sam’s life is on the line and you’re _waiting_?”                    

Dean glared. “Oh no, don’t you fucking dare. I’d die for Sammy, okay? Him and Cas and Charlie, I’d die for all of them in a heartbeat. Any help you can give us getting my brother home, I’ll accept it, but I’m sure as shit not leaving their lives in your hands.”

Dean’s eyes were green and wet and furious-frightened, and Gabriel thought of Sam holding a shaking gun, Sam spitting blood and trying not to cry.

He swatted Dean’s hand away, sighing. “You two really _are_ brothers, aren’t you? You could start a band—call yourselves the Guilt Trips and sing about how the audience betrayed you by existing wrong.”

The comm vibrated, and Dean thumbed it on. He let out a heavy breath. “Cas checked in. Okay, c’mon, lead the way.” 

“You sure you don’t wanna yell at me some more?”

“Shut up and walk, tin-bone.”

“Again with that! They’re made of a titanium-aluminum alloy, Dean, for fuck’s sake. All but one, of course.”

“Fine, whatever.”

“Don’t you wanna know which bone is the exception?”

“No.”

“It’s my boner, Dean.”

“Oh my god.”

 

They’d planted themselves by the roof access hatch closest to the interrogation cells, so it wasn’t long before they found themselves coming up on Sam’s. Gabriel signalled for Dean to stay low and out of sight while he rounded the last corner.

The two Gadreels from earlier were still stationed in front of the door. Gabriel broke into a brisk walk halfway down the hall, abandoning his camouflage and adopting a stern expression.

“Didn’t you hear the order?” he barked, coming to a stop in front of the Gadreels. “All units to investigate the blast sites! What are you still doing here?”

“Begging your pardon, Archangel Gabriel,” said the one on the left, “but Inquisitor Zachariah gave us a primary order to remain in place until his return. He is looking for you—would you like us to alert him to your presence?”

“Lord no, I know where he is, I’m headed over there in just a sec. Just gonna check in on Winchester first. As for you two, I’m overriding that primary order. You go take care of those pyromaniacs outside, okay?” 

They nodded and saluted. “Good morning, Archangel.”

As soon as they rounded the corner, Gabriel waved Dean out of hiding. He turned to the access panel, ensuring once again that it would remain locked from the inside. Before he tapped to open the door he stopped, fingers hovering.

“Listen,” he said without looking at Dean. “He’s gonna be in bad shape, so… prepare for that.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you left him with a torturebot all night,” Dean snapped. “I figured as much.”

Gabriel scoffed, but didn’t say anything as he opened the door.

The next few seconds were a blur. _Click-whirr_ as Dean cocked his handblaster, Charlotte yelping and Hannah throwing themselves between her and the barrel of the gun, Gabriel yanking Dean away from his mother, Sam calling out Dean’s name—

Then the hiss and bang of a misfire, and a smoking hole in the floor.

“ _Fuck_.” Gabriel wrenched the blaster from Dean’s grip and snarled at him. “You fucking _idiot_. You can’t shoot up a secured room in a goddamn military barracks, it trips the silent alarms!”

“What? And you couldn’t have told me that earlier?”  

“It was supposed to just be Sam, I didn’t—” He whirled on Charlotte, who was still standing behind Hannah. “Pardon my French, _maman_ , but what the flying fuckcheese are you two doing here?”

She squeezed Hannah’s shoulder for support, and Gabriel could see how badly she was shaking. “I-I-I don’t, uh, I don’t kn-know, I-I…”

“Hey.” He shoved the gun back towards Dean, who took it in hand as he eyed Charlotte. Gabriel took a step towards his mother and put a hand over hers. “You gotta buck up for me, okay? I’m sorry, I know this is sudden and it sucks. But Zachariah got that alarm. He’s on his way back, so we gotta blow this popsicle stand before he fucks us like the two-dollar whores we wish we were pretty enough to be. All right?”

Charlotte gave the beginnings of a nod, then stopped and frowned. “N-no, hey, wh-who’s _we_? Gabe, I love you, b-but I’m not—I c-can’t—”

“I know, Mom—”

“Wait, _Mom_?” Dean shoved at Gabriel’s arm, turning him so they were facing each other. “The Artifex fucking Deus was interrogating Sam?”

Charlotte raised her free hand. “No, I-I just got here, I swear.”

“ _Dean_.”

All of them, even Hannah, angled into the sound of Sam’s voice. Dean slid the blaster inside his jacket and crossed the room in a couple of long strides. He fell to his knees in front of the chair, inspected his brother’s face with his hands, thumbing under Sam’s split cheek.

“Hell, Sammy,” he breathed. “You point out the asshole who did this, and I’ll rip the wires out of his fucking skull.”

Sam laughed weakly. “It’s… good to see you too.”

Gabriel crept up behind the chair, cutting the cuffs around Sam’s wrists with a beam from his Third Eye and making short work of the nylon cords binding Sam to the chair. Sam sighed as everything fell away, sagging forward into Dean’s arms. Judging by the way Sam buried his face in his brother’s shoulder and the way Dean clung to him, it had been a long, long time since they’d last been able to do this.

Dean met Gabriel’s eye and jerked his head in a brisk approximation of a nod. It was more thanks than Gabriel had expected from him.

Sam’s hair fell away from his neck, revealing yet another bitten bruise from their time on the couch. Twitching fingers, and Gabriel rubbed his hands on his jeans for the friction, to soothe their sudden urge to touch Sam’s skin. He could’ve catalogued every pore and freckle, every hair and scar on Sam’s body. He could’ve mapped him out like a landscape, hills and valleys and pools from which to drink. Every soft spot, every knot, the inch-wide circle of perpetually hairless skin above his cock, interrupting his dark curls—an itemized list of now-useless details to be compounded with everything else he’d learned over the past month. The mission was over, and Sam was lost to him, and Dean was thanking Gabriel for his surrender.

“As touching as this is,” Gabriel said, “we really don’t have time for a family reunion right now. C’mon, Dean, get him on his feet and let’s go.” He looked over at Charlotte and Hannah, who were frozen. “We overpowered you, you couldn’t stop us. Hannah, punch her in the face.” They blinked at him. “I’m not kidding.”   

Hannah cocked their head. “I am not going to punch Charlotte.”

“Then you gotta come with us—if Zachariah finds you here and Sam gone, either you’re traitors to Equin, or you’re the yahoos who got punched out. Pick a lane.”

Charlotte frowned. “And you?”

Gabriel hesitated, then switched on his transmitter so he could send his mother everything he’d learned from Sam about the black Grace—about his suspicions regarding Lucifer.

_I have to go, Mom. I have to know if he’s still out there. And… after all this, I don’t think I can serve those ancient fucks anymore. I made my choice, and now I need to run._

Charlotte stared at him a long moment, still frowning. Her gaze flitted to Hannah, and Gabriel knew they were talking something over. Of course he was asking a lot. Of course it was too much, too fast for Charlotte. Hell, anyone would have a tough time processing all that on the spot, let alone someone who was routinely overwhelmed by casual visitors. He shouldn’t have asked, should’ve just knocked Charlotte and Hannah on their asses himself and hoped to be forgiven. Taken the choice right out of their hands.

With another squeeze of Hannah’s shoulder, Charlotte stood up straight. “O-Okay,” she said, squeaky and unsteady. “L-lead the w-way, Gabe.”

Gabriel could’ve kissed her—or fallen over from shock, the jury was still out—but all he did was grin. There would be time for whys and wonder when they were all safe. “All right, we gotta move fast. C’mon.”

The five of them clustered around the door while Gabriel tapped the unlock sequence into the access panel. The autolock precaution would’ve been disabled by the alarm, but they still needed the code to get out from the inside. As he fiddled, he felt a brush against his arm— _Sam_ —and paused, leaning into the touch as much as he dared.

“You told the truth,” Sam said. “You came back.”

Gabriel crooked a smile, resumed tapping without looking back at him. “Is that a thank you?”

Sam didn’t answer. He didn’t get a chance. The door slid open on Gabriel’s _you_ to reveal Zachariah standing in the hall beyond the frame, flanked by the two Gadreels Gabriel had sent away. The Inquisitor bared his ferrety teeth and chuckled.

“Oh, _so_ close, Gabriel. But—how do you like to put it?—no cigar.”

The Gadreels lifted their right hands and their blades slid out of slits in their skin. They gripped the blunt bases, settled into fight-ready stances. Gabriel unsheathed his as well—Dean, one arm under Sam’s shoulders, fumbled for his handblaster for a moment and _click-whirred_ it back to life.

Gabriel strutted forward with a lazy smirk, picking at the point of his blade with his free hand. “I wouldn’t say that, Zach. See, we outnumber you two to one, and the rest of your backup is currently running around in the scrub like a herd of headless chickens.” 

Zachariah scoffed. “Please.”

The Gadreels moved like lightning, and Gabriel froze—cold, sharp metal bit at his throat, the Military blades holding him two arm lengths from the Inquisitor. He lowered his own weapon, laughing high and manic.

“Can’t even come at me yourself, huh?”

Zachariah’s grin was almost affectionate. “Now, why would I waste the energy to do that when I can have you vivisected on an order?” He lifted his gaze to the others. “And if anyone makes a move, I will.”

“Zachariah,” came Charlotte’s voice, sharper than anyone was used to hearing, “let him go _now_.”

Gabriel watched Zachariah’s expression flicker, then fall. “Artifex Shurley.” He actually sounded hurt. “How could you do this to us? To your children, your patrons…”

“I-I…”

“She is not yours.” Hannah’s voice, now.

Zachariah’s lip curled. “And is she yours, Servile? You’ve covered your bracer, but I see what you are. A pathetic little maid playing dress-up. No better than your Archangel, really—a ‘bot playing human.” His eyes glinted in the overhead light. “You know, I’m glad I found you all here. I love a chance to kill two birds with one stone.”

All at once, three things happened.

 _Hiss-bang_ from behind as Dean fired his blaster. The right Gadreel collapsed, head smoking, nicking Gabriel’s shoulder. And plunge and pain _pain pain_ as the left Gadreel sank its blade into his neck.

Gabriel wanted to scream, but he could only choke around metal. He fell to his knees, distantly aware of a second, third shot. _Critical damage sustained seek assistance seek assistance._ Thuds as more bodies hit the floor. Someone, two someones calling his name. _Assistanceassistanceassistance_. His mother’s hands.

Then black, like Grace.


	11. The Pitstop

The power reserves in Gabriel’s system kicked in only a few minutes after Charlotte tried restarting him. One of the benefits of posing as a human—he was constantly eating, constantly storing converted biofuel. Which was good, because he’d need to keep that up now more than ever.

He blinked awake, soft humming from his bones, and Charlotte nearly wept with relief. She leaned over the gurney, pressed two fingers to the stitched wound in his neck to make sure it would hold shut while he was operational. It felt like it would.

“Gabe, you’re okay,” she murmured. “Y-you’re okay.”

He stared at her in silence for a moment, then frowned. “I can’t… I can’t hear your…” he said, voice hoarse. “Or my…. Why can’t I—where are we?”

Charlotte rubbed the back of her neck, straightening with a nervous laugh. “Ah… yeah, ab-about that…”

Gabriel stared above her, at the reinforced earth ceilings and walls. Turned his head towards the tunnel entrance and the patchwork hide curtain hanging from its frame. He sat up, curiously blankfaced, his horrified eyes belying the lack of expression.

“Mom. Where the hell are we?”

She sighed. “C’mon, I’ll… I’ll show you. Can you, uh, d’you think you can walk?”

He stared at his legs, which didn’t move. His frown deepened. “No, looks like I’m still booting up. How long was I out?”

“Three days,” Charlotte told him, unlocking the gurney’s wheels. “We’ve had, ah, limited resources, so we c-couldn’t exactly just flip the switch, y’know?”

“We?”

“Well, yeah.” She pushed the curtain aside, nudging the gurney through. “ _Jeez_ , y-you’re heavy. But yeah, I mean, S-Sam and Dean weren’t about to leave you for dead after you helped them. I might have cried, too. G-grieving mother shtick works like a charm.”

Gabriel gave a bitter laugh.

The tunnel was winding but short—Dean said it’d been dug around a copse of trees—and lined with supply lockers set into the walls. Lightbulbs attached to coiling wires lined the ceiling. They arrived at a second hide curtain and Charlotte scrambled around the gurney to pull it through.

The complex’s main room had sleeping pits dug into the floor, a solar power generator in the corner hooked to panels on the ground above, a large industrial cooler, and little else. There were two more curtain-doors leading out, but everyone was gathered here in various sleeping pits. Castiel was showing Hannah how to clean a gun, Dean was tending to Sam’s wounds, and Charlie was digging through her bag. They all looked up in unison as Charlotte wheeled Gabriel in.

“I bring y-you Sleeping Beauty,” she intoned, nearly tripping into a pit as she did so.

Charlie shot up and out of her pit, grinning ear to ear. “ _Yes_ , it worked! Lemme tell you, it is _not_ easy fixing damage done by a Military blade. Your vocal mechanisms were busted up like crazy and nearly all the supports in your neck were sliced clean through. I did what I could with the mech supplies down here, but…” She shrugged. “Maybe try not to get whiplash for the next few days while everything sets. And of course we didn’t find _any_ skin patches, so, uh, sorry buddy, you’re stuck with stitches for now.”

Gabriel smiled wryly. “Don’t be sorry—now I’ve finally got a cool scar story to tell at parties. And I’m sure I’ll be going to plenty, now I’m… here. In this place.” He paused pointedly, but nobody filled the silence. “Which iiiiis…?”

Charlotte cleared her throat. “W-we, ah… we had to cross, Gabriel. You’d shut down and Sam could barely stand a-and…”

 

_And Dean just took down Zachariah and two Gadreels, and that crazy smoke is going to wear off soon. Dean tells her this, tries to explain the situation to her, but she already knows what she’s chosen. She has no doubt that Zachariah notified Raphael of her treason before Dean shot him. Raphael’s frequency is undetectable, as if he’s gone deliberately silent. She has nowhere to go but with the Winchesters._

_She and Hannah help carry Gabriel out, until they meet up with Castiel—the same Castiel Charlotte had once known. It hurts to see James Novak’s face again, but it’s comforting to see that at least one unit survived the line purge. Charlie Bradbury is thrilled to meet her, almost as thrilled as she is suspicious. At first she’s loath to fix Gabriel, but Charlotte begs and Sam begs and Dean acknowledges that Gabriel_ did _help them. Charlie relents, grins—it’ll be a dream come true to get a chance to tinker with an archangel._

_Castiel and Hannah fly them all back to the outpost, where Charlie tosses them all survival packs and hauls out a sled-like contraption to drag Gabriel along._

_The border is weakened. It’ll let them through without hurting them. It’ll let them leave the only home Charlotte has known for all one hundred and sixty years of her too-long life._

_In the end, it’s a quick thing. She hauls herself up to the window, loses her balance, tumbles out of Eden and lands flat on her face. She’s only superstitious when portents bode ill, so she calls it a bad omen._

_For a long moment, she thinks she’s gone deaf._

_For the first time since she built the archangels, her head is quiet._

_She’s lost the Radio, and her head is ringing, and she weeps into the earth, unsure whether she’s crying for relief or loss._

_Hannah helps her to her feet, and Charlotte knows they’re cut off too. She can see it in their face. Her body feels so much smaller. Frailer. She clings to Hannah as tightly as she’s able._

_Charlie reverses the weakness in the border with a remote device and they set off walking._

“This is a, uh, a s-safehouse, kinda,” Charlotte said quietly. “What’d you c-call it, Dean?”

“A Pitstop.” Dean grinned through the pun. “Anybody out here can use ‘em, just as long as they don’t clean out the supplies and leave a little behind for the next folk.”

“Right. We stopped here to f-fix you up before your plasma levels got too low.”

“Yeah, not to mention people back home? Not too crazy about the whole _angel_ thing.” Dean pressed a damp cotton ball to Sam’s shoulder. Sam hissed and Dean made a face at him. “Don’t be a bitch. It took them nearly a year to accept that Cas wasn’t about to kill them in their sleep. Figured it’d be easier to patch you up here than deal with their crap.”

 Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “So me and Hannah, what’re we supposed to do? And _Mom_ , what’ll your fearmongering buddies think of the Artifex Deus wandering into their little hick town?”

Sam and Dean exchanged a pointed look. Charlie drummed her fingers on the gurney, not meeting anyone’s eye. Charlotte frowned. She’d been wondering the same things, though she’d assumed—possibly incorrectly—that the outsiders’ help with fixing Gabriel had been a sort of tacit peace treaty. They hadn’t said anything about what would happen next.

Charlotte’s grip on the gurney’s edge tightened. She couldn’t go back to Eden now—the Equin chairs wouldn’t kill her, but that was a small comfort knowing how they liked to persuade those they didn’t kill. A few days alone with an Inquisitor… perhaps they’d repair Zachariah if they could, let him have his revenge. Or perhaps they’d give her over to the chair with the meaty hands and the cold eyes, his cruel megawatt smile beaming down as he vivisected her with a lover’s care.

Gabriel and Hannah certainly couldn’t come back; they’d be marked for scrapping the moment they crossed back over. Perhaps Gabriel could survive out here, search for Lucifer, explore the remains of the world. But Hannah—all Charlotte could think about was how Hannah hated to eat. They would do it if they had to, but—

The other shoe dropped, and Charlotte felt her skin go clammy. _The Grace_. Without her blood, in a little less than a month the ball of Grace in the Equin Tower would sputter and fade. And every angel in Eden would be without a power source. Again, they could eat. But there were so many angels, and so many humans, and not so much food, and— _oh god, what have I done_?

She whiteknuckled her hold trying to stay upright, breathing harsh through her teeth. She had to go back.

She couldn’t go back.

Would she even have a choice?

It was Castiel who broke the silence, finally. “We may have to bring you in on a… probationary basis. We’ll explain what you’ve done for us, of course, but Dean’s right. Our settlement isn’t angel-friendly.”

“So, what, we’ll have to live in a shack on the edge of town or something?” Gabriel swung his legs over the gurney, flexing his feet like a ballerina. “At least until we’re allowed to reintegrate with polite society again.”

Charlie reached over to help Gabriel onto his feet. “Not… uh, not quite. Like, you’ll be in town, but, uh…”

“You’ll be glorified prisoners,” Sam finished for her, staring at Gabriel as if he were confused by something.

Gabriel stared right back, looking deliberately unaffected. “A POW by any other name, huh?”

Sam jerked his head, lowered his gaze to the burn Dean was treating. “Just want you to know what you’re getting into.”

Rolling her eyes, Charlie turned to Charlotte with a sympathetic set to her mouth. The young woman had warmed to her and Hannah rather quickly after her initial suspicion, and though Charlotte found her exhausting in large doses, Charlie was a welcome and endearing ally.

“They won’t lock you up or anything, promise,” she said. “We’ll all fight for you. Just, y’know, you’ll have to play the game. It sucks, but you gotta put in the hours to earn any kind of trust or respect out here.”

Charlotte’s mouth twitched. “Y-you, uh, you sure seem to be okay with us a-after only a f-few days.”

“Quality over quantity,” Dean piped up as he rebandaged Sam’s shoulder. “You saved Sammy, and you gave up a hell of a lot to do it. ‘Course, I still don’t _like_ you or the shit you represent. Or the shit you’ve actually done.” He wagged a finger between Gabriel and Charlotte, turned to glance at Hannah so they knew they were included. Then he shrugged. “But hey, I can appreciate that kind of sacrifice.”

 _Not enough_ , Charlotte thought, and felt selfish for thinking.

Gabriel took a few shaky steps towards Sam and Dean’s pit. “And what if,” he asked, “we don’t go with you?”

He and Sam were back to staring at one another. Still and curious and angry on both sides, like thin ice begging to be shattered. Sam’s answer was curt: “Then that’s your choice. It’s a big world out there. I’m sure there are plenty of places you could go.”

There was a long silence, and Charlotte remembered enough about social interaction to recognize that she wasn’t the only one who found it awkward. Whatever it was that sat unspoken between Sam and Gabriel, it was uncomfortable and confusing for everyone else.

“Fine,” Gabriel said, sharp and final. “Glorified prisoners it is.”

Charlotte’s eyebrows flew up. “Really?”

He turned to face her. Smiled bitter and slight. “What can I say? I kinda wanna see where this goes. You and the help,” he jabbed a thumb at Hannah, “are welcome to join me.”

As she had many times during the past three days, Charlotte reached furtively for Hannah’s mind. She was craving that security, that intimacy—and Hannah had barely spoken aloud since they’d crossed the border. Not hearing Gabriel in her head was unbearably strange. Not hearing Hannah was just unbearable. Especially at a time like this, when Charlotte _knew_ Hannah was thinking hard.

She met Hannah’s gaze from across the room, and tried to beg for help without speaking.

After a moment, Hannah stood, still looking at Charlotte. “I believe that it’s safer for Archangel Gabriel and me to go with you, considering his recent damage and our shared lack of a reliable power resource. We do not have much of a choice. Charlotte does.”

Charlotte shrank at the feeling of everyone’s eyes on her. She was grateful that Hannah tried to offer her the decision, but a part of her just wanted it to be made for her. So many years spent living for her angels, she couldn’t fathom any other kind of existence.

She tried not to wonder how much that affected her decision to say, “I’ll stick with them.”

 

———

 

Everyone was set to leave the next morning—it was late already, and Dean and Castiel were adamant about not travelling in the dark.

“It’s only about a two hour drive, but trust me, headlights bring attention you _don’t_ want,” Dean said. 

His car, which was parked and hidden somewhere above the Pitstop, would only seat five of them. So Castiel suggested that he and Charlie fly out as soon as the sun rose, alert the settlement of their approach and give them time to adjust to the idea of two more angels and their creator joining them there.

With that settled, those who needed bed began to get ready for it—rolling out sleeping bags in the pits, visiting the bathroom beyond one of the hide curtains. Gabriel was dragged away by Charlie to the room where he’d awoken so she could check up on his throat.

“I asked Charlotte if she wanted to help me fix you, but she figured you’d be better off with someone who wasn’t a walking talking mess. Her words, not mine—on the tech side of things, she’s my idol. Not so much with the sponsor politics, but hey, it’s been a while.” She pulled back from the stitches and gave it a spray of something cold. “That’ll keep it set until we can get skin patches. Those… uh, those’ll probably be a _biiit_ harder to find out here, but Dean and Cas say it won’t be impossible.”

“Aw, I don’t get to keep the cool scar story?”

Charlie laughed. “I could always mess up the patch job a little so it’s still obvious.”

“Mm, yes. Hey, odds are you won’t be able to find the right skin tone anyway. And then I’ll be able to regale people with the tale of the time I took on six armed guards at once with nothing but my robotic fists.”

“I heard it was two.”

“ _And_ an Inquisitor; I only exaggerated half.”

She laughed again, and Gabriel collapsed on the gurney with a groan, shutting his eyes. “I’d better knock out,” he said. “Preserve my energy and whatnot. I haven’t eaten in a while.”

When he didn’t hear her leave, he opened one eye to see Charlie peering at him quizzically. “I don’t get it,” she said.

He cocked an eyebrow. “You see, when an angel comes towards the end of the Surge cycle, or, like me, is illegally transported across state lines—”

“No, dumb-dumb. I don’t get how you act so… _human_. I mean, if Cas hadn’t outed you, I never would’ve figured it out.”

Gabriel sighed, closed his eyes again. “Easy. Angels were programmed to have adaptive personalities. I’ve been around longer than most other angels—I’m the most adapted to human behaviour—whoop dee fucking doo, I’m the best at pretending to be one. Ergo, I gotcha.”

“Got Sam, too.”

Gabriel went still. Then, after a long moment: “Entering sleep mode.”

 

He stayed like that, not really bothering to put himself to sleep, for some time. Cycled through spools of entertaining data, replayed a memory of the first time he watched _Plan 9 From Outer Space_. Waited for the sounds of shuffling feet to die down.

When at last he heard nothing but quiet from the main room, he set his sleep timer and prepared to power down for the night. Just before he flipped the proverbial switch, however, he caught the sound of someone approaching.

He didn’t bother scanning for who it was—didn’t want to waste the power. But curiosity kept him from slipping off to sleep to avoid talking to whoever was coming.

They pulled back the curtain. Gabriel opened his eyes to see a greyscale Sam hovering over him carrying a metal bowl, and he sat up straight.

“Sam?”

“Keep it down.” Sam bobbed a horizontal palm in the air—purely for Gabriel’s benefit, since it had to be too dark for him to see more than vague shadows. “I don’t wanna wake anyone.”

Gabriel snorted softly. “So no light? How am I supposed to see that pretty, busted face?”

“Fuck you. I brought you food.”

“What?”

“From the cooler. I… we’ve been feeding Cas and Hannah, I figured you’d want something too.”

Gabriel eyed the bowl. It was full of some kind of slop, white and mealy and wet, and he realized with dawning horror that it was honest-to-god cold porridge.

“Not _that_ I don’t,” he muttered.

Sam smiled, though Gabriel supposed he’d deny it if pressed. “It’s better than it looks, I swear. Also.” He dug in his pocket, producing a small packet. “I brought sugar.”

“Sam-yoo-ell Winchester, you sure do know how to treat a man right.” Gabriel took the sugar and the porridge and set about mixing the two. “I would’ve thought you’d still be spitting pissed.”

“I am.” Sam shifted on his feet, leaned one hand on the gurney for support. “But you got me out. Zachariah told me I was dead the second they caught Charlie’s mistake. They would’ve sent someone after me regardless, eventually. You’re… probably the best I could’ve hoped for. So. I’m feeding you. But that’s it.”

Gabriel nodded, swallowing a mouthful of porridge. “If it’s any consolation, the fact that you’re feeding me _this_ crap is more or less the most passive-aggressive way you could punish me right now.”

It was Sam’s turn to snort. “Even with the sugar?”

“Even with the sugar. And I’m telling you that because you’re injured,” he grinned, “and I know it’ll make you feel better to know that I’m suffering.”

Sam laughed outright at that, quiet and unsure. In the silence that followed, his hand on the gurney began to shake, and Gabriel cleared his throat.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Get your perky ass into the pit.”

“You sure?”

Gabriel nudged him gently. “ _Yes_ , I’m sure. Stop up that bleeding heart and go to bed. You hate me, remember? Quit wasting your energy being all saintly towards the fucker who got you tortured.”

Sam flinched back and did as Gabriel asked, not bothering to say anything else as he left. Gabriel shovelled back porridge and told himself he’d been joking.

 

Gabriel had been born in a basement and spent the first year of his life on Charlotte’s property. He learned to run on a treadmill, learned to speak in front of a television screen, but he learned to breathe under the trees in the backyard. He would lie in the mulch and grass—a bed of clover and dandelion, rimmed by untamed blackberry brambles coiling around the fences and tumbling down into a ravine below. The soil was canopied by two laburnums and a crabapple tree. The whole yard smelled of rich earth and the sweetness of rotting fruit.

Then Equin had moved Charlotte to their penthouse suite, and the four archangels with her. Gabriel had forsaken a wild garden for steel and glass—and while the latter certainly captured his heart, he’d missed being able to breathe. That was always part of why he enjoyed border towns so much. They were closer to the world he’d left behind.

When he, Charlotte, Hannah, and the Winchester brothers climbed the stairs and exited the Pitstop that morning, Gabriel took the deepest breath he had in years.

Pines and firs and maple trees surrounded them almost completely. The ground was thickly overgrown, peppered with sprays of wildflower colour. The sky was blazing blue and clear, and the sound of summer-slow water nearby told him they were still on the river. A sheer dirt slope choked by grasses and horsetails led upwards to a plateau that Gabriel identified as the remnants of an old road. He noticed the crumbling walls of some sort of shack, split by a young tree—most likely the site of this Pitstop really _was_ a pit stop back in the day.

There were places in Eden that were like this, of course. Sam’s riverbank came to mind, for one. But this was different—the trees were taller, healthier. The air had a clean richness to it that simply couldn’t be found within the enclosure of the border. Inside, everything smelled vaguely of Grace, something so ubiquitous Gabriel had stopped noticing it after a few years. The world out here looked lush, and it smelled wild. 

 Gabriel opened his mouth to exhale, purely for the pleasure of it. Instead he let out a soft sob.

Charlotte appeared at his side, gave his arm a squeeze. “I know,” she said. “I d-did the same thing.”

Gabriel shook his head slowly. “I… didn’t think I’d see any of this. Ever.”

“M-me neither.”

“Nor did I,” Hannah murmured, coming up behind them. “Nu angels are provided precious little information about the world outside Eden, except for what we learn in the reels about the Fall. I didn’t realize trees grew so high.”

Dean was looking at them like he wanted to laugh—whether out of empathy or mockery Gabriel couldn’t be sure. Beside him, Sam was running his hands through a patch of grass with a soft smile on his face. Gabriel remembered that Sam had, as far as he knew, never actually left Bromley or its outskirts. This was new for him, too. The archangel felt a sudden rush of affection for him and wondered what Sam might look like with flowers in his hair.

“All right,” Dean said, clapping his hands together, “how ‘bout we take a break from admiring the scenery and get this dog and pony show on the road, huh?”

He led them into the brush, moving several artfully arranged branches to reveal a sleek black muscle car that looked older than Charlotte.

Gabriel blinked. “How did I not notice that?”

Dean patted the hood, gazing adoringly down at the vehicle. “Coded under the paint—keeps the ‘bots away… for the most part. But hey, that’s where this puppy comes in.” He flashed his handblaster with a grin.

“Don’t you need Grace for that to work? Sam mentioned you guys steal it sometimes—you can’t have it in large supply out here.”

“No-o.” Dean opened the driver side door and shrugged. “But we harvest what we can, for what we can. You’d be surprised how much old tech is still out here.”

 _Harvest_. Gabriel wasn’t sure whether he wanted to know exactly what that entailed. He decided it wouldn’t be his problem unless he made it so, and kept his mouth shut.

 Dean drove the car out of the undergrowth, and the rest of them piled inside, Sam taking shotgun while their fellow fugitives filled up the backseat. Charlotte sat squashed in the middle, curling into herself as she was wont to do. Gabriel, on her right, was tempted to drape himself across her and Hannah’s laps just to be annoying.

Once they crested the slope, it became apparent that the main reason why they were staring down the barrel of a two-hour trip was the lack of road maintenance over the last century or so. Cracks and potholes and debris littered their path, and Dean took several confusing serpentine turns to avoid the worst of it. Gabriel’s throat began to feel sorer with each jostle and bump; he could only imagine how Sam was faring.

Speaking of which—Gabriel couldn’t take his eyes off the way Sam’s hair fell against his own bruised neck. He was trying to avoid being caught, but it was difficult to stop staring. He wasn’t certain what he was feeling—it wasn’t lust, that much he knew. His sensory memories of sex with Sam were just that: memories. Pleasant, sensual, heartbreaking even, but not arousing. It was more like instinct. An ( _need? Desire?_ ) urge to soothe the breaks in Sam’s skin and put him right again, but not one necessarily born of his own will. He _wanted_ to make Sam better, of course. But it almost felt like programming, the way Gabriel was drawn to him now. Something bone-deep and primal.

Sam glanced in the rear view mirror and met Gabriel’s eye. He furrowed his brow and Gabriel waggled his own.

“I know objects in the rear view mirror appear closer than they are,” he purred. “So does that mean you can see me coming already?”

Sam’s frown became an all-out glare, and his lip curled nastily. “You sure you’re not just somebody’s discarded sex toy?”

“Yeah, yours if I’m not mistaken. And not your first, by the feel of you.”

Dean and Charlotte groaned in unison. “Fucking _ew_ , Gabe,” Charlotte whined.

“You’re full of shit—right, Sammy?” Dean glanced at his brother, silently begging.

Ignoring him, Sam just rolled his eyes and looked back at Gabriel. “That’s not how sex works, you asshole.”  

“… Work _your_ asshole.”

“Oh, _come on_ ,” Dean snapped. He gave a dramatic, full-body shudder. “Shut the fuck up, both of you, or I’ll feed you to the fucking demons, I swear.”

Sam huffed and thumped his back against his seat, pointedly like a child. Gabriel gave in to his earlier temptation and settled across Charlotte and Hannah’s laps, disregarding their mutters of protest.

“Wake me when we get there, guys. I’ve got energy to conserve,” he said, and shut his eyes.

A few minutes later, he heard the crackle of old, dusty car speakers coughing out an all-too familiar melody. _She’s got a smile that it seems to me, reminds me of childhood memories…_

Gabriel peeked through his lashes, watching the blur of Sam’s profile jostled by the uneven road.

 

_Now and then when I see her face_

_It takes me away to that special place_

_And if I stare too long I’d probably break down and cry…_


	12. Toy Soldiers

_From the lip of a fortified apartment balcony, a man with dark eyes watches the horizon. The angel told him of those who were coming—a woman with the power of a vile god and two of her puppet children. Another long-absent ally like the girl with the red hair. She sits in the waiting room below him, and he thinks she must still be humming and kicking her feet like she was when he left her. He thinks the angel must still be standing in the lobby, an object waiting for command. They are non-autonomous, unreal until he makes them so. Like props, like toys. But he will keep them well as he keeps all his things, because they are his, and his name came to him burdened with that responsibility. He thinks perhaps the god-woman will understand. He thinks perhaps she will be swayed, once broken of her vile thoughts. If broken of them._

_Samuel Campbell watches and waits for his deliverance._

 

A wall surrounded the settlement—five meters of metal and reinforced wood rising out of one and a half meters of concrete, encased on the outside by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Gabriel could feel the buzz and heat of electricity haloing the fence like a deathtrap aura. The wall crossed over the edge of a small lake that extended south of the settlement, the concrete pitted with water grates. Two guard turrets flanked a section of unchained metal that Gabriel had to assume was a gate. The people in the turrets—one man and one woman—were manning mounted Gatling guns and had poles strapped to their backs that looked like metal quarterstaffs, but Gabriel could sense that there was something more to their structure, though from this distance he couldn’t quite tell what.

Dean pulled up in front of the gate and thumbed on his comm, making a couple of selections before speaking into it. “Winchester here. Bringing in a lost boy and three tars—two angels and a human.”

He reached his arm through the car window and tapped the outside roof with the flat of his palm. A feminine voice broke through the speaker. “All clear, Dean. C’mon in.”

The gate slid open with a low, monotonous groan, and Dean drove them inside.

Though smaller than most of the cities in Eden, this place had clearly once been prosperous. Bricolage post-Fall structures stood alongside pre-Falls with a few modern additions. Many had extra storeys in clashing styles rising out of the original, shorter building, like those in Bromley but more hodgepodge. These original buildings were surprisingly well-kept, and Gabriel could see the shadow of the charming mountain city this had once been.

The streets were crowded with people and animals—no species that he could name, but hybrids and mutations like the skurtle he’d spied over a month ago. Gabriel saw livestock, or something akin to it: freakishly large pigs, fowl with mottled green feathers and narrow, curved bills, lumbering burgundy beasts with opalescent eyes that looked like their ancestors might’ve been cows once. There were dog-shaped things, long-limbed and skinny like greyhounds, fur shades ranging between shimmering gold and a brilliant slate blue. Shaggy deer creatures nearly the size of draft horses, pearly white from antler to hoof, led about with harnesses and reins.

Covered carts hauling scrap metal, crates of food, drums of sloshing liquid. Children playing, children working, a group of people hauling what looked like a solar panel across the street. A few people had those quarterstaffs strapped to their backs, and this close Gabriel was able to discern that they had retractable blades on either end, hidden in the pole. Another quick scan told him that those blades had electrified edges.

Almost everyone watched them as they drove by. Many of them waved, or shouted hellos to Dean, all of which he returned.

“You sure got popular,” Sam muttered.

“Of course!” Dean grinned at him. “I’m a charming guy, Sam, I can’t help it if people love me.”

Sam snorted, but he was smiling too. “Sure.”

Dean had driven them almost across the city at this point, and Gabriel saw that the settlement was adjacent to a second lake. Up here it was rimmed by beaches, visibly long-established marinas, and the repurposed remains of a boardwalk, suggesting that the city had seen some degree of tourism in the past. The wall continued to the lake’s edge on two sides, the water in the middle littered with small boats captained by more armed guards.

They came to the base of what was, at fifteen storeys, easily the tallest building in town. Pulled into a large adjacent carport, stuffed full of seventeen vehicles, the first they’d seen since entering the settlement. They were all pre-Fall models with slight coding like Dean’s: four pickups, three vans, six all-terrains, and four of what a connoisseur or historian might call _classic cars_.

“Welcome to the fleet deck.” Dean grunted as he popped open his door and stepped out. “Sit tight, I gotta call Cas, see what’s up.”

Gabriel closed his eyes and drank in the sound and vibration of the settlement. It had a particular, tangible energy to it, utterly unlike the precise chaos of urban Eden or the lazy order of Bromley—this place felt uneasy.

So, for that matter, did Charlotte and Sam. Hannah sat as still and impassive as ever, but the two humans wouldn’t stop fidgeting. Gabriel opened his eyes again.

“Relax, Mom. They said we’d be prisoners, not martyrs.”

“I-I-I know.” Charlotte’s gaze was trained on her lap, where her tangled fingers were snapping without rhythm. “B-b-but I...”

Hannah turned their head towards Charlotte, waited a moment before placing one white hand over hers. “Peace,” they said, flat as old water.

Gabriel gave them a questioning look. They stared blankly back. “It’s the sentiment that I customarily project towards Charlotte when we exchange psychic contact. I have no choice now but to verbalize it.”

Charlotte choked out a sodden laugh and leaned against Hannah’s body, curling into the curve of them like soft clay into a cupped palm. The Servile’s eyes went warm. Gabriel wondered whether they’d ever called Charlotte _mother_ too, and guessed not.

He looked over at Sam, who was still fidgeting (shaking a leg, tapping fingers against the knee). Wanted to say something, touch him—“Hey, kiddo.”

Sam jerked at the sound, but didn’t stop shaking. “What?”

“Just saying ‘hey’.” Gabriel leaned on the back of his seat. “And maybe throwing out a ‘you’re a living hydraulic’ for the record.”

Sam shot him a glare, but if he was planning a retort it was cut off by Dean opening the driver’s side door. “All right, we’re goin’ up,” he said. “Everybody outta the car.”

He led them into the building, into a lobby that looked like someone had blasted holes in it. Doors and sides of the walls had been removed and punched out so that only open archways leading outside remained. People were milling about, some waiting for the twin elevators, some just passing through. Many of them stopped and stared as Dean brought his party in, eyeing the newcomers with a sharp suspicion and Hannah especially with open hatred. A few bystanders spat at the Nu angel, hissing slurs and curses at them all.

Two armed women stood flanking the elevators, identifiable as authority by the white-on-black _Patrol_ patches sewn onto the breasts and arms of their unmatched jackets. They had handguns at their hips and those same metal quarterstaffs on their backs. Castiel stood beside one of them, and his expression softened as the crowds shuffled apart to let Dean and company through.

“Good to see you home, Winchester,” said the patrolwoman next to Cas. She was slender, beautiful like cedarwood and magnolia flowers, and middle-aged, with short-cropped dark hair and shrewd, bright eyes. “These four the cargo?”

“Those three are, Jody.” Dean jerked a thumb towards Gabriel, Charlotte, and Hannah, then clapped Sam lightly on the back. “This handsome devil, on the other hand, is Sammy Winchester.”

The woman—Jody—curled a smile and held out a hand. “Oh, the famous brother, we meet at last. How’s it going, Sammy?”

“It’s just Sam,” he corrected her kindly, accepting the handshake. “And good.”

“You don’t have to lie, Sam. Cas told me about the, uh, about what you went through. You did good, kid. The Big Man’s gonna like you.”

 _The Big Man?_ Gabriel wondered as the second patrolwoman—this one shorter, younger, and curvier, with a long blonde ponytail and a sweet, incorrigible dimple that made Gabriel think of spring daisies—lunged forward to clasp Sam’s still-outstretched palm.

“Great to meetcha, Sam,” she chirped. “I’m Mrs. Donna Hanscum-Mills. She’s the Mills,” Donna said in a stage whisper, and nodded at Jody, who sighed. Donna wrinkled her nose. “What? How often do we meet new people? Who do I get to tell?”

Sam laughed, big and genuine. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks, but they’re not exactly in order,” Jody said. “We’ve been married six years.”

Donna giggled and nudged her wife’s shoulder. “You’re no fun, Jodio. You folks wanted up, right?” she added, addressing Sam and Dean. “Don’t worry, car’s on its way.”

Right on cue, the lefthand elevator chimed its arrival and the doors slid apart. All six of them—Castiel slipped in beside Dean—shuffled onboard. Donna and Jody waved them goodbye, turning back to the crowd as the doors slid shut once more.

“Who is the Big Man?” Hannah asked, as if they could still read Gabriel’s mind.

“The leader of New River,” Castiel said, a grim set to his jaw. “That’s what they call the settlement, New River.”

“Yeah, and, uh, about that.” Dean rubbed at his face. “Look, the guy isn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy type. His family’s been building, guarding, and maintaining the shit out of that wall out there since it went up, okay—he’s a homegrown, legacy hardass. So don’t talk back to him if you wanna live to see your next birthday.”

Everyone turned to stare at Gabriel in perfect sync, like a cartoon gag. He threw his hands up. “Wow, I am _insulted_. I know how serious this is, I would _never_ jeopardize my— _our_ —safety for the sake of cheap snark.” He paused. “It’s probably better if I just don’t talk.”

Dean chuckled. “Good answer.” The elevator dinged to a stop and the doors opened, but Dean held out a hand to them before anybody stepped off. “One more thing,” he said. “The Big Man? He’s Sam’s and my grandfather.”

 

The elevator car had stopped one floor beneath the Big Man’s suite. Suite-slash-office, as Dean clarified before he and Sam ascended. They were to see him first, leaving everyone else in limbo in the waiting room. The waiting room, as it turned out, was a studio apartment stuffed with dilapidated sofas and a few mostly-empty bookcases. Castiel ushered them inside, where Charlie was waiting for them with her nose buried in an old-model, tricked-out tablet.

“Thought you guys were never gonna get here,” she said as they entered. “Didja already go upstairs?”

“He wanted Sam and Dean first,” Castiel answered for them.

“Oh, good. Hopefully they’ll be able to butter him up better than I could.” Charlie set the tablet aside, motioning for Charlotte to sit next to her. “So! What d’you think of this place? I’ve been hearing stories about New River since I was a little kid, so I guess I kinda built it up a bit in my head…? I was picturing something more… like a time capsule. Like stepping back into one of those old movies Sam watches at work,” she looked at Gabriel, “you know the ones. But this is straight-up post-apocalyptic, man—like something out of Fisher James.”

Felicia “Fisher” James was a popular author of speculative serials in Eden—she wrote pulpy, epic adventures set in an alternative universe where Charlotte had been too late to erect the border. The entire world had been reduced to a wasteland, and the heroes set out in search of ruined Edenic tech in order to rebuild civilization. It was exactly the sort of literature that Equin loved, because it made a world without them seem harsh and unnavigable. It was exactly the sort of literature that dissenters loved, because it showed them that there was a way to live apart from what Equin had given them. Gabriel enjoyed the hell out of Fisher James, and liked Charlie a little more for having made the reference.

“I-It’s…” Charlotte shook her head, was visibly avoiding Charlie’s eye. “It… it’s great.”

Gabriel could guess what was going on in her mind. New River might still be going by its old name if Charlotte hadn’t joined with Equin. The wall around the settlement, so similar to the border around Eden, would never have been built. Charlotte, Gabriel, and Hannah’s presence was a monument to everything anti-artificialists stood against. They were the embodiment of the enemy. And Charlotte was facing that reality head-on, facing the results of her actions in the form of eighteen cars, an electric fence, and people who spat at her creations as they walked by.

Charlie seemed to arrive at the same conclusion. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, no, jeez, I’m sorry, I—yeah, I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s fine,” Charlotte said quietly. “I n-needed to see it.”

“So the Big Man is Sam and Dean’s grandfather, huh?” Gabriel interjected.

To his surprise, Castiel was the one who responded. “He is their mother’s father, yes. That’s why he thought it appropriate to trust Sam with this mission, even though he hadn’t met him.”

Something in his tone twigged Gabriel’s interest, even as he thought of Sam, young, stupid Sam, agreeing to undertake a dangerous assignment for an invisible scrap of family. “You don’t think it was appropriate,” he said.

Castiel looked away. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you’re thinking it, aren’t you?” Gabriel settled down on a couch patched up like a duct tape mummy, and grinned at his brother. “C’mon, Cas, spill—we’re all friends here, aren’t we?”

He cast about for support, but Charlotte was staring pointedly at the ceiling and Hannah was watching Cas. Charlie, however, looked interested.

“I think you should tell him, Cas,” she said, and there was a hardness to her tone that Gabriel recognized from the outpost, from when he was found out.

Castiel sighed and gestured vaguely. “It’s… difficult to explain. But Sam wasn’t supposed to be involved at first. He was meant to continue ferrying materials across the border, and the Big Man and the local mechanics were going to deal with the issue of the Jaxstone themselves.”

“Jaxstone?”

“What you call the black Grace. New River has always been immune to the effects of Jaxstone—something in the water, we thought, so the mechanics organized a variety of experiments to test the theory. But they were yielding slow, almost nonexistent results. Until…” Castiel’s eyes went cold, and he somehow managed to gather in on himself without actually moving a muscle. “Until they weren’t. A handful of the mechanics became Jax-sick. Then it spread to their families. Then it spread to others. A whole chunk of New River was lost to it, either crazed or dead or killed later by those who’d succumbed to the violence. We quarantined that section of the settlement and disposed of the Jaxstone. And all we learned was that the effects manifest at different rates.”

“So you gave it to Sam and Charlie,” Gabriel said slowly, “because you didn’t care if that happened in Eden. Or you hoped it would.”

“It’s not that simple,” Castiel snapped. “Yes, the Big Man decided that an outbreak in Eden, amongst our enemies, would be preferable to another outbreak here. But more importantly, Eden is _controlled_. There’s no Jax in the air. We thought that an environment full of pure Grace might… counter the poison, somehow.”

“What was wrong with giving the assignment to Sam, then? He was doing fine until I got involved.”

Castiel scowled. “Yes. He was. But that was beside the point. The Big Man could’ve just given the Jaxstone to Charlie—she’s the Grace technician, after all. Everything Sam knows about New River, about the Jaxstone, about _anything_ beyond the border, is hearsay from his brother. Given some time out here, he could’ve been a fine ally. But he was green. The Big Man knew that, and yet he turned the mission into a game, into a rite of passage. _Complete this task and you’ll have earned your place among us_.” His scowl tightened, grew sad. “He wanted Sam to prove he deserves his own blood.”  

The fear in Sam’s eyes at the prospect of his betters finding out he’d failed. His absolute certainty that he’d be killed, that Gabriel would be killed, if he leaked a single drop of information. Gabriel didn’t know what kind of man would willingly put that kind of terror in his own grandson, but he was sure that it would take some miraculous force of will for him not to throttle the Big Man the second they met.

He also couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. Equin and everyone else in Eden was terrified of crossing the border—in fact, most people outside of border towns weren’t made aware that it was even possible. What was the Big Man afraid of them discovering, so afraid he’d threaten to kill Sam for revealing it? They’d already found the Jaxstone, and that was contained. Sam hadn’t even hinted at knowing the location of New River or his allies there. So what? What was worth killing him over? And more importantly, was Sam going to keep himself off the chopping block now that he was reporting back?

Charlie pushed herself off the couch, announcing that she needed to pee. Gabriel took the opportunity to snatch her seat, settling in beside his mother. Blinked coyly at her. “ _You’d_ never assign me to a dangerous, top-secret mission just so I could prove my worth, wouldja, Mom?”

In his periphery, he saw Castiel roll his eyes. Charlotte was frowning at him—and he knew why. Technically speaking, Equin had organized the assignments, but the sentiment was eerily, achingly similar.

“No,” she said, still frowning.

 

———

 

Finally, Dean returned for them. Sam was missing, but Dean quickly assured them that he’d been sent to another apartment to receive better medical attention.

“Yeah, good thing the hospital was on the right side, huh, Cas?” he said, smiling at the Military. He didn’t elaborate, but Charlotte guessed that _on the right side_ meant on the right side of the quarantine.

She supressed a shudder, thinking of the people who’d been trapped behind the quarantine. A flash of

( _screaming, screaming, reaching for her, screams muffled as the wall comes up and divides families, friends, lovers. Blood and bodies lining the border until one day they’re just gone, replaced by drag marks. People on the right side report hearing wet sounds, like something feasting_ )

memory invaded her mind and she shut her eyes against it. Kept them shut, in the most metaphorical of senses, as she was led back to the elevator. She barely registered the movement—it was swallowed up, muffled against a litany of _your fault your fault you left them out here to die_. If only, she thought, if only the border casting had been strong enough to protect everyone. Or to contain Michael and Lucifer, cage them instead of caging herself. Maybe the world would’ve forgiven her the property damage, the spread of Equin, if she’d saved more of it.

They arrived at the suite, and Castiel opened the door onto an apartment done up like a corner office. What had clearly been intended as a living space was lined with filing cabinets and other boxes, the kitchen in a state of disuse except for an ancient cooler ( _refrigerator, they called them refrigerators_ ) that was humming with electricity. The walls were hung with weapons and metallic limbs like trophies mounted on the plaster. The middle of the room had a few more of those run-down couches—all loveseats this time, the duct tape coloured black to match the leather. In one corner sat the odd duck: a floor-to-ceiling, lifelike statue of a glossy black creature with too many legs, its mouth a gaping, lipless hole, its eyes numerous and the same sheen as its body. It looked like a larva had crossbred with a giant black beetle. It looked _real_ , Charlotte decided, swallowing her revulsion. Fat mass seeming to pulse with a sluggish heartbeat no one could hear.

Pushed up against the far wall of the apartment was a wide wooden desk, and behind that a bald man in his late sixties, early seventies. He had a strong, rounded nose and small dark eyes, glinting like his statue beneath heavy grey brows. He stood when they entered, the Big Man living up to his name—over six feet and bulky with muscle and fat, wide, rough hands flattened against the burled walnut.

“Have a seat,” he said, and Charlotte didn’t trust the casual courtesy of his tone.

They sat, though, rears finding grooves in cracked leather, Castiel fading away behind them. The door clicked shut, and Charlotte had the sudden feeling of being consumed by a creature with wall-shaped jaws.

The Big Man waited a long beat before sitting back down, smiling thinly. “Charlotte Shurley. I’d say it’s a pleasure, but I don’t want to begin with a lie.” 

She tucked her hands under her thighs to keep them from trembling. “F-f-fair enough.”

“My name is Samuel Campbell,” he said. “I’m the leader elect of New River. And I’ve been told you’re looking for shelter.”

“I-I, uh, yeah, I… w-we… we just don’t kn-know where else to go, and—”

“Yes, I heard,” Campbell said. “I know what you did. Your unit there,” he gestured to Gabriel, “turned on my grandson and then turned on Equin. You followed him out. Now, as you’ve no doubt guessed, I’m not opposed to letting angels in when they prove they’re on our side, but as far as I’m concerned, your ‘bot was just cleaning up the mess it made. Not sure I can trust it based on that alone. And _you_ , and your… maid… you two I know I don’t trust.”

He didn’t address Gabriel or Hannah at any point as he spoke. Didn’t look at them for more than a second. They might as well have been props, living bits of mise en scène inserted at Charlotte’s flanks. His _it_ s for Gabriel bore heavy on her heart.

Campbell had paused, as if waiting for an answer to a question he had yet to ask. Impatient, he went on, “Sam, Dean, the Castiel, and Ms. Bradbury have all said I should grant you amnesty. But I’ve always believed in letting folk speak on their own behalf. So do it. Tell me in your own words why I shouldn’t kill you right here.”

Charlotte opened her mouth, but it was Gabriel’s voice she heard.

“Oh, what, so the three of us fleeing the metaphorical fucking country isn’t enough proof that we play for the other team?” he snapped.

Campbell crooked an eyebrow, smiled coldly. “You’re not all that smart for an android, are you?”

Privately, Charlotte agreed with him. Wanted to kick Gabriel in the shins—what’d happened to _it’s probably better if I just don’t talk_?

Clearly, Gabriel had forgotten it. “Smart enough to know when someone’s looking for an excuse to be a dick.”

The Big Man’s smile widened, and it reminded Charlotte of a coyote—sharp, predatory, and ready to take a mile for any inch it’s given. “You don’t think I’m being fair.”

Gabriel scoffed. “I didn’t rat out Sam. I just opened the wrong box. He would’ve been tortured and killed if I hadn’t gotten him out, and you and yours would’ve been none the wiser. You should be throwing us a fucking parade, Toecutter.”

“Oh really?” Campbell roughed at his thin lower lip with the pad of his thumb. He laughed, and met Charlotte’s eye. “Is it speaking for you, Shurley? Or does it need a tune-up?”

He said it like he was giving her a second chance. Like he’d ignore Gabriel’s disrespect if she countered it with groveling. Charlotte thought about taking that chance before she wound up dead.

Thought about it.

“ _He_ s-speaks for me,” she said. It was probably the stupidest thing she’d ever done, but she refused to begin another life like she had the old one. Putting her head beneath everyone’s boots before they had a chance to lift their feet. “W-we did the r-right thing, uh, and y-you can’t—”

“Can’t what?” Campbell snarled. “Can’t do my damn job and protect my people? Don’t play wounded hero with me, _Artifex_. I should’ve had you shot the second you stepped through my gates.”

“B-but I-I h-helped Sam. I w-wanted to l-leave, I didn’t do anything—”

“ _You put us here_!” he roared, cheeks flushed. “Didn’t do anything? You’re the reason for _all of this_ , the only goddamn reason!” Swallowed, regained some semblance of composure. “And since you’ve got no interest in saying anything that’ll actually save your hide, I guess it isn’t worth all that much to you, after all.” He drew an old pistol out from the desk and placed it on the wood. “Your choice, Shurley. I can shoot you now, make it quick, or I can make it public.”

Charlotte’s mind raced. A part of her, a bitter, sick, miserable part, wanted to take him up on his offer. Maybe that’s why she’d decided to press, maybe she wanted that bullet.

Another part of her worried that she would change her mind the second he pulled the trigger.

A third part knew that Edenic tech was valuable, and Gabriel and Hannah wouldn’t meet the same tidy end as her.

“Wait.”

Campbell didn’t flinch, didn’t twitch, but something in his eyes told Charlotte she’d stumbled across a hidden third option. Or that she was about to.

“W-what if I… wh-what… uh…”

“I’m waiting.”

The words fell out like she’d belched them. “I can figure out the Jaxstone. I-I can, I can find a-a way to, uh, to stabilize it.”

There came that coyote-smile again. “Is that so?”

“Yeah.” She had no idea.

He leaned back in his seat and thumbed at his lip once more. “Hm. Well, that certainly is interesting.”

“J-just gimme some time w-with it. I mean, I, heh, I f-figured out Grace, right?”

Campbell held up a palm. “Don’t push your luck, Shurley, you haven’t made the sale yet. You and your toys can wait downstairs while I mull this over. Who knows? I might decide you aren’t worth the risk.”

The door squeaked open again, and a few moments later Charlotte felt a hand on her shoulder. She twisted around to see Castiel behind her, looking impassive.

“P-promise me something,” she said. “Y-you’re a man of your word, a-aren’t you? I mean, I-I assume.”

Campbell nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Th-then you have to promise,” Charlotte leaned forward. “Wh-whether you t-take my help or not, these two,” she pointed at Gabriel and Hannah, “g-go free. You d-don’t touch them, o-okay?”

“In love with toy soldiers. You’ve spent too much time with your angels, Shurley.”

“ _Promise._ I-If they’re just toys to you, th-then you must know that a t-toy has no power w-without a powerful player. Y-you’ve got a loyal Castiel. Y-you can m-make them loyal, too.”

If she still had access to the Radio, she would’ve reassured Gabriel and Hannah that she was bluffing, that she didn’t really think that. Gabriel would understand, of course, but Hannah… Charlotte would never forgive herself if she died with Hannah believing she’d wanted them to pledge allegiance to a man like Campbell. 

So instead she shifted her weight, slipped a hand out from under her thigh and squeezed Hannah’s lightly. _I won’t let them take you_.

Campbell sighed, shook his head like he was indulging a child. “All right. I’ll get some use out of them either way, I swear.”

“Th-thank you,” Charlotte breathed, standing with the others. Castiel began to lead them back towards the door, and Charlotte gave Campbell an awkward, sharp wave as the statue of the black creature caught her eye again. “N-nice, uh, art.”

Campbell followed her gaze, then looked back at her with a sniff. “I guess you could call it that.”

“… Wh-what else would I call it?”

Coyote-smile, and coyote-laugh. “Taxidermy.”


	13. Parasite

“So did anybody else notice the angelic death machine on his desk, or was that just me?”

Gabriel waited just long enough for Castiel to close the door on them before speaking. The apartment they’d been shoved into was dingy and unfurnished save for a single red pullout couch pushed up against the wall. Charlotte made her way over to it, heavy-stepping and shaking. 

“The wh-what?” she asked as she sat down.

Hannah joined her. “I believe he’s referring to the gun that Mr. Campbell used to threaten us.”

Charlotte’s brow furrowed. “But… th-that kind of bullet c-can’t wreck you. M-maybe you,” she said, looking at Gabriel, “i-if he reopened your w-wound, but that’s a b-big _if_.”

“Nah, but those weren’t just bullets.” Gabriel hopped up on the kitchenette counter. “Those were _super_ bullets. Coded like those blades of Charlie’s, so they’d scramble the stabbee. Or shoottee, in this case.”

He traced patterns in the faux-granite laminate counter so he wouldn’t have to see Hannah staring at him. There was more to be said, and they knew it, and Gabriel knew he should say it. But the words were stuck in his mouth, dried against his tongue. _And pellets of Jax inside, to burst on impact. Black and blue Grace battling it out in an open wound, spreading and infecting and tearing you apart—just in theory, Mom, but hey, good thing he didn’t fire, huh?_

It wasn’t that Campbell could’ve killed them all—and horribly—with a few quick shots. It was the fact that Charlotte hadn’t known, and had still hesitated to save herself. He supposed it was selfish to be upset by that. He hadn’t been around all that often lately, anyway.

Charlotte shuddered. “Oh.” She didn’t lean on Hannah again, but Gabriel could guess that she wanted to by the way her body was curled.

He wanted to snap at them to retreat to the apartment’s bedroom and leave him to his countertop. Instead he lay back and stared at the pendant light fixtures above him. Thought about Campbell, deciding their fate, remaking them into insects, flies to be mashed under his thumb or left alive to concuss themselves against glass.

Gabriel wished for a familiar face to appear hovering over him, smiling.

He closed his eyes against the light.

 

They were released, finally, after about six hours of absolute silence. When Gabriel heard the apartment door swing open he’d expected to see Campbell on the other side, or at least Castiel—but the people who ushered them out were unknown to him, and didn’t offer names. Two men in dark clothes, armed with quarterstaffs, heavy-soled boots thudding loud as they led their charges out of the building. One with the vague appearance of a young Clark Gable if Clark Gable were a dystopian jarhead, the other with a weak jaw and buggy brown eyes. They didn’t speak, except to say _come_. Charlotte and Hannah didn’t speak. Gabriel rattled off a running commentary about their escort’s outfits and demeanor that went tragically ignored. 

In the lobby, they caught their first glimpse of New River’s night. There were only a handful of streetlights, most illumination coming from windows or strings of bulbs hanging from the eaves of buildings. The streets, from what Gabriel could see and hear, were mostly empty.

One of the white deer-creatures stood in front of the lobby, hitched to a cart. This close Gabriel could see silver hairs growing with the white, faded grey patterns on the hooves and antlers like spiderwebbing cracks on ceramic glaze. It peered down at him through vertical slit pupils against pure, pale blue, and yawned, revealing black gums, black tongue, and glasslike, translucent teeth.

Campbell’s men ushered them into the cart—a simple square with wooden slat benches, and covered with a canopy of grey-green tarp. Bug-Eyes sat with Gabriel, Charlotte, and Hannah in the back, while Clark Gable sat in the box seat up front and took the creature’s reins.

“What d’you call these things?” Gabriel asked, crossing his elbows on the back of the box seat and nodding at the animal before them.

Clark Gable glared at him. “Ghost deer,” he snapped. “Sit back, ‘bot.”

He took them nearly across town, to the edge of the quarantine wall—the area had been cordoned off with fencing and heaps of broken furniture, doors, siding, all scrawled over with code. It loomed, a haphazard barricade stinking of decaying Grace, the air sizzle-popping and sparking like the raw end of a live wire. Gabriel felt sick, and Hannah squirmed beside him.

To their great discomfort, the cart pulled up beside a building only one structure removed from the wall. Bug-Eyes took one look at the way his robotic charges were fidgeting and laughed.

“Yeah,” he said. “The war machine don’t like it much by here, either.”

It took Gabriel a second to realize that he was referring to Castiel. “Maybe it has something to do with the light show.” He gestured at the sparks. “War flashbacks and all.”

“No, no.” Bug-Eyes’ voice was buoyant, and his smile grew teeth. “It’s your wirin’, you can feel the Jax in the air, can’t you? You can feel that change settin’ in. Them sigils keep it from leaking enough to touch us, but I’m betting it gets to you ‘bots. You’re gonna rot inside, you two and the war machine, and the Big Man’s gonna put you down for good. Least one fair thing’ll come from the outbreak, huh?”

Gabriel squinted at him. “Wow. It happened faster than I thought.”

“What?”

“Well, I mean, with a population this small and contained, it was inevitable that there’d eventually be inbreeding. I just didn’t think it would’ve happened so _soon_.”

Charlotte made a choking sound that Gabriel recognized as her trying to cover up a laugh. Bug-Eyes blinked, then snarled. He pulled the quarterstaff off his back— _click_ , _snick_ , and one end’s narrow, electrified blade was hovering over the side of Gabriel’s neck. Right over his stitches.

“Whoa, hey, it was a _joke_ , genius.” Gabriel threw up his hands in defense, ignoring Charlotte’s strangled outcry. “Calm down!”

“Fuck you,” he hissed. Exchanged a glance with Clark Gable, who shook his head. Bug-Eyes let out a sharp whine. “C’mon, Oz, what’ll anybody care? We’ll say it attacked.”

“Put it away, dumbass, the Big Man said we need ‘em working.” Clark Gable—Oz—fixed Gabriel with a cold stare. “For now.”

Bug-Eyes thumbed a catch on the quarterstaff and the blade retracted. He hunched his shoulders, sniffed sulkily. “Good people got stuck on the wrong side of the wall,” he muttered. “Good people, an’ we bring in three tin-bones and the Tar Queen herself like they’re our goddamn guests.”

“The Big Man took your deal, Queenie,” Oz said, winking at Charlotte. “You’re here to figure out the Jaxstone.”

Charlotte sagged, closed her eyes. “Okay. O-okay, I-I’ll—”

Bug-Eyes snapped out his free hand and grabbed her by the arm—Gabriel and Hannah both made towards him, but before they could do more than lunge forward, _click snick_ and that electrified blade was humming at them once again.

“Heel,” he said. Squeezed Charlotte’s forearm and twisted, pulling skin. “I’m just showin’ her inside, that’s all.”

He dragged her off the cart, and Oz crawled over the box seat to usher Gabriel and Hannah after them. Led them to the yellowed cream townhouse complex in front of which they’d parked, up a narrow staircase on one side to the door. The curtains were drawn but there was a faint light behind them.

Bug-Eyes rapped on the door, and a few moments later it swung open to reveal Dean. Gabriel would rather be scrapped than admit how glad he was to see him.

“Uh.” Dean stared out at the procession at his door, and blinked. “You guys are… early.”

“Yessir,” said Bug-Eyes. “Have fun with the trash, Dean.”

Gabriel, Charlotte, and Hannah traded hands with a few quick shoves and some muttered insults, and before they knew it the door closed behind them and they were trapped in Dean’s home. It was a hairsbreadth away from derelict, walls lined with pinned sheets, stripped of paint in some areas, cracked and faded. The floorboards squeaked and had lost their varnish, the furniture was generations old and had clearly been reupholstered and patched many times. The foyer was directly off the living room, which sported a wood-burning fireplace that had likely been built as a character feature but now showed signs of frequent use that betrayed it as a necessity.

With a sigh, Dean walked around them and beckoned them to follow him. “Welcome to the family home, I guess,” he said. “We’ve, ah, got a lot of space, but it’s mostly filled, so you guys’ll be sharing the master. Trust me, it’s not as comfy as it sounds.”

“Ooh, who’s filling your empty spaces, Dean?” Gabriel asked as they were led down a flight of stairs.

Dean cast a withering look back over his shoulder but didn’t otherwise acknowledge the joke. Which Gabriel regarded as fair, since it had been one of his weaker attempts.

He brought them into the master bedroom, a spacious affair clogged with detritus, kindling piles, and old furniture. A single sleeping roll lay in the middle of the floor, next to a glowing wind-up lantern. Dean left the three of them there along with directions to the bathroom for Charlotte.

Gabriel immediately began inspecting the boxes and bags of assorted whatever that dominated the room. Hannah and Charlotte watched him for a long moment before shrugging and joining in. Most of it was _parts_ —wires and circuit boards and other mechanical scree, metals, fabrics, cushions, nuts, bolts… the heaping trophies of dumpster divers and hoarders.

“Must come in handy,” Charlotte muttered, holding up the disemboweled remains of an old desktop computer.

Gabriel’s fingers caught on something that felt like Kanekalon hair, and he hooked a finger around a scraggly curl. Pulled forth a doll with all the paint on its face faded, leaving the plastic ridges of its features blank and uncanny. It wore no clothes, and its hair came away in pale blonde knots when Gabriel disentangled his finger.

“Not all of it,” he said.

———

 

Charlotte woke to a world in greyscale. Heavy curtains shrouded the windows of Dean’s master bedroom, and what faint morning light filtered through was dusty and moth-eaten.

She rolled over and saw Hannah in sleep mode, sitting upright against the kindling. Took a guilty moment to pass her eyes over the curve of their cheek, the soft point of their nose. Fought the utterly alien urge to touch, hold, kiss, swallowing it even as it surfaced. It was the sort of feeling Charlotte knew in theory but not in practice—that butterfly feeling her childhood friends referred to when they spoke of playground crushes. Charlotte had never felt it. Not once in a hundred and sixty years. She’d always held that she existed apart from it—the words _aromantic_ and _asexual_ , words she hadn’t thought about in so, so very long, came to mind. The asexuality remained; she knew that for certain. But that butterfly feeling persisted whenever she looked at Hannah, and Charlotte wondered whether that meant she had changed. Perhaps that long century had remolded her, made her different. Or perhaps it was Hannah who was different.

Gabriel was already awake, fiddling with a picture frame—it was thick, covered in a mosaic of multicoloured glass, though most of the pieces were missing. He tossed it back into its box when he saw Charlotte watching him.

They woke Hannah and crept upstairs as a unit, to find Sam, Dean, and a hulking bear of a man in the kitchen. The brothers were seated at the island, the bear hovering over them with a scratched, handle-less pan full of what smelled like fried eggs in his gloved hands. His size belied the genuine smile in his eyes when they settled on the newcomers, and Charlotte liked him instantly.

Dean introduced the man as Benny, one of their new roommates. “‘Course you already met Cas… he’s at City Hall. There’s Ash, too—he’s already out on the wall, so you’ll see him in a bit,” he added.

Benny nodded at Charlotte, Gabriel, and Hannah each in turn, smiling soft and crooked. “A pleasure to meet y’all,” he said, _sotto voce_. He spoke with a sonorous Louisianan accent, and Charlotte couldn’t for the life of her imagine how he’d ended up with it. “I heard what you done for my boy. I wouldn’t be here if t’weren’t for Dean, myself, so I gotta thank you for keepin’ him and his safe.”

“Y-you’re welcome,” Charlotte muttered, fingering her sleeve. She was abruptly conscious of the fact that she was still wearing the clothes she’d put on before leaving the penthouse, and everything about her felt itchy and grimy and small. “Uh, b-bathing—what’s, what’s the bathing situation?”

“Do we get new clothes, too?” Gabriel gestured at his too-tight jeans and oversized button-down. “I’m feeling a teensy bit mismatched, here.”

Sam flushed and ducked his head, and Charlotte realized where that button-down must’ve come from. She covered her snort of laughter with a cough, like a proper embarrassing mother.

“The Fitzgeralds next door barter clothes,” Benny said. “We’ll go over and match them for some pretty threads. Then you can clean yourself up. After breakfast, all right, _chere_?”

He winked at Charlotte. She smiled (or perhaps grimaced) back, ignoring the curious hollow twist in her gut.

The eggs, which Charlotte guessed were produced by the green fowl they’d seen on their way in, had pale, pinkish yolks that tasted both saltier and richer than the genetically modified chicken eggs they still harvested in Eden. Benny served them on slices of dark, sweet, grain-heavy bread. The meal was odd, but satisfying. It settled in her stomach with the same bright, liquescent feeling Charlotte associated with food prepared from farmer’s market ingredients. The sort of food Daddy and Omar bought because it was more health—if not more quantity—for your dollar. The sort of food Mama refused to buy because she didn’t have the dollars for it. _Organic_ , _Farm-Fresh_ , _delivered right from Ole Man Muskrat’s fruit an’ vegteeble stand_ , _sirs_.

Charlotte swallowed around a lump in her throat.

They ate up, and Sam, without looking at any of them, skulked off downstairs. Dean said he was joining Charlie in the basement, that they were familiarizing themselves with the Equipment, a word that found itself unduly capitalized in Charlotte’s mind. Capitalized, underlined, circled three times with highlighter marker.

“Equipment for what?” she didn’t ask. Because from the way Dean looked at her when he said it, she’d be acquainted with it soon enough.

Dean left, announcing that he was going to the wall and that Benny should bring Charlotte to him when they were done. Benny, meanwhile, stuffed a cloth sack full of loaves of that same dark, sweet bread and a roll of brick-red muslin before leading them outside.

He brought them to the other side of the townhouse complex, to four adjacent ground-level entrances. Over their immediate neighbour’s door, propped open with a block of wood, was a painted sign reading _Fitzgerald Clothiers_.

If the house had been used solely for its intended purpose, the floor before them might’ve been an open-plan foyer and den. As it was, it had been thoroughly converted into an overlarge caravan tent. Worn-thin but brightly patterned cloth covered the walls, and threadbare Persian carpets had been rolled over the hardwood that peeked out at the edges of the room. Shelves and loose racks were scattered about, stuffed full of fabric rolls and clothes. On the far end of the wide room, a makeshift wooden folding screen blocked off a chunk of the right corner. Across from it, a floor-to ceiling mirror fetched up against the floor-to-ceiling window.  

“‘S just me, Garth,” Benny called. “I got some folks in need of a new wardrobe.”

From behind a rack, a man popped up and grinned. He looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties, whip-thin and bony, with big ears, soft eyes, and a gonkish nose.

“Oh my,” he said, catching sight of his new customers. He had a Southern accent too, though his was sharper than Benny’s bayou drawl. “You… you’re _them_ , ain’t ya?”

Gabriel stepped forward. “Our reputation precedes us. Good. That explains why you aren’t more in awe of our unparalleled beauty.” 

“As if I wasn’t!” Garth’s smile widened. “Can’t tell you how honoured I am! An’ Benny too, I s’pose, if he hasn’t already said.”

 _Honoured_?

Hannah cocked their head. “It was my understanding that the three of us are anathema to the people of New River.”

Garth shrugged. “Most of ‘em, yeah. But Benny ‘n’ me ain’t from New River, not originally.”

“That’s right,” Benny said. “Where we’re from, s’called Leighville. Got cleaned out ‘bout a decade ago, and we came north when it did. Leighville… looked a lot kinder on your kin, _chere_.” He addressed this last to Hannah directly, and Charlotte’s esteem for him grew.

“It was based out of an old Equin factory town.” Garth took a step closer to Charlotte, nodding eagerly. “They were makin’ angels there, and not all of ‘em went sour right away, so we had to live with ‘em. They helped us. Some of us… kinda owe ourselves to that tech.” He hitched up his sleeve, and Charlotte realized that his right arm from hand to elbow was the wrong colour. Just a shade or two darker, subtle but noticeable all the same. “And up here…” He hooked his finger in his collar, dragged it down to reveal his right shoulder—all metal plate, protruding from his flesh. “We ran out of skin patches after the elbow,” he said.

“I’m the same way,” Benny said, and lifted his pant leg, exposing a metal shin. “Both legs to the hips, and all my teeth. ‘N some places, the fallout didn’t just mutate us into monsters. Our people had to improvise.”

 Charlotte could’ve cried. She felt her face crumple as if she was going to. Garth put a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t cry, ma’am, it’s a good thing! Your tech saved us.”

“I-I know,” she murmured. “I’m glad.” But beneath that, _does it count as a good thing if it saved you from itself_?

Garth helped all three of them pick out clothes. Found them their sizes, promised tailoring on a couple of items. Charlotte and Gabriel’s pants almost all needed hemming, and they took turns standing in front of the mirror while Garth pinned and marked.

Hannah was the most difficult to dress. Though they knew what they liked to look at, they had no idea what they wanted to wear. More than once, Charlotte found them staring at articles of clothing like they were alien artifacts. They favoured subtler colours: greys and off-whites, pale blues and soft pinks. The blues were Charlotte’s favourite, and she told them so, though she neglected to mention the reason why— _they bring out your eyes_.

“Skirts, maybe?” Garth suggested. “Somethin’ pretty and light. Bess likes those best—my wife, Bess.”

Hannah shook their head vaguely. “I don’t think those would be very practical.”

“Well, I mean, clothes don’t always have to be practical,” Garth said. “Sometimes they just have to make you feel right.”

Charlotte, her arms full of jackets, jeans, and soft knits, helped Hannah search through the clothes. Dresses and overtly feminine clothing put them off as much as the overtly masculine—pantsuits, which Charlotte thought would be a solid middle ground, made them stop and think for a moment, but ultimately deemed the style too constricting.

Finally, Gabriel pulled a navy jumpsuit off a shelf—the sort of thing a mechanic or janitor might wear, baggy and belted at the waist. “Might look good on me,” he mused, holding it up to his chest.

Charlotte’s eyes widened. “H-how about that, Hannah?”

“I said it might look good on _me_.”

She held out a hand. “Give it over.”

As it turned out, the suit was perfect. Hannah emerged from behind the wooden screen with an expression as close to recognizably joyful as they’d so far managed to adopt. Turned to Garth and asked, “Do you have any more?”

Half an hour later, Garth was laden down with three loaves of bread, the muslin, and a handful of circular chits that looked like they were made of folded pop can aluminum. Benny called them _universals_. They waved goodbye and returned to their townhouse, dragging sacks of clothes. Hannah had found three more jumpsuits—two grey and one sandy brown—and promised Gabriel he could borrow the navy one if he wanted.

The Winchesters actually had a working shower, to Charlotte’s delight. It had low pressure and the water smelled a bit like silt, but it was hot, and it was clear for all its stink. Their soap counteracted it anyway, as it had been perfumed thickly with sage. She emerged scrubbed and fresh and put on clothes soft with wear, and she honestly didn’t think she’d ever felt so comfortable.

“Lookin’ fine there,” Benny said when she came back up to the kitchen.

Charlotte sat down at the island, listening to the sounds of Hannah and Gabriel on the deck. They hadn’t wanted to waste water, so had brought a kettle and another bar of soap outside to wash their various crannies. Their inability to sweat or excrete and Hannah’s dearth of orifices made the whole process much simpler.

“I-I don’t…” Charlotte hunched her shoulders. “I d-don’t know how to fix this.”

“Hm?”

“The Jaxstone.” She looked up, met his eyes. “I j-just s-said that to, to save us. B-buy us more t-time, but… I h-have no idea how to…”

Benny smiled sadly. “I guessed as much. We’ve been lookin’ at it for years, _chere_ , and we haven’t figured it out yet. You’ve a better understandin’ of Grace, but… I know a lost cause when I see it.”

“I kn-knew I ruined it out here,” she whispered. “I just didn’t r-realize people were still p-paying for it.”

He didn’t reply, and for that Charlotte was thankful.

 

Up close, the wall looked rickety, as if it could be toppled by a stiff exhale, but it sat unwavering in the face of the summer breeze. Charlotte tipped her head, gazing at the swath of clear, blazing blue above its crackling heights. Dean was nowhere to be found, nor was the mysterious Ash he had mentioned earlier. There was nothing but bric-a-brac quarantine and a cotton-thick silence.

Benny brought her a few blocks down the wall, to a lean-to set up in the beginnings of an alleyway. In the lean-to was a table full of electronic equipment—unfamiliar tools covered in knobs and blinking lights, lined with wires like veins. A few empty glass containers, an open notebook weighed down with rocks, a single, large tablet with a spiderweb crack in the corner. The tablet’s screen was black, but the notebook was scribbled over with Grace coding sigils.

Overhead, a thin cloud passed in front of the sun, and under the dipping shadow Dean emerged seemingly from nowhere. “Cool toys, huh?”

His voice was muffled and tinny, but Charlotte didn’t need to guess why. He was wearing what looked like an old military gas mask, made of dusty hide and beaked with a black filter. Thick gloves ran up to his elbows. He clutched a smaller version of those quarterstaff weapons—only about a foot in length—in his right hand, and there was a pistol at his hip. A kidney-shaped sack was slung over one shoulder. An ancient Polaroid camera hung from his neck like a bulky talisman. Charlotte realized abruptly that the reason he’d appeared out of nothing was because he had come from beyond the quarantine. The realization came to her calmly, the way one might accept being robbed after first losing their job and then their beloved pet. _Okay. I guess I gotta deal with_ this _shit now_. 

“Anything to report?” Benny asked.

Dean tucked the quarterstaff into a holster and reached around the back of his head. The mask came off in his hands. “No new growth in my section,” he said. “Ash says if it keeps off another month, it’s safe.”

“We’re blessed if it does,” Benny said.

Dean scoffed. “Yeah, the way those poor fucks’re blessed they’re not Jax-sick.” He nodded at the wall, and Charlotte didn’t want to think too hard about how _those poor fucks_ must’ve been living.

 “I-it’s the Jax,” she said. “Th-that you’ve been, uh, monitoring, yeah?”

“You got it,” Dean grunted as he began shedding his gloves and bag. “After the wall went up we crossed over to, ah, purge the sick. Burned the bodies, left anybody who wasn’t nutso to sit and stew until we know for sure it hasn’t spread to ‘em.”

“That’s… that’s good.” Charlotte’s fingers twitched, reaching for the camera involuntarily as Dean set it down. This place brimmed with nostalgia, more than any Archive she’d ever visited. It was tangible. Proof that her old world wasn’t yet dust, but rather preserved in it. “S-so wh-what am I supposed to be working with?”

Dean grinned—a tight, humourless thing. He drew a tiny box out of his bag, metal with sigils on the sides. They weren’t Grace-fuelled—they were painted with a brownish, crackling pigment that Charlotte didn’t want to recognize. “Turns out blood works for sigils too,” Dean said. “Weaker than the Grace ones and no match for a demon, but it works well enough.”

“Th-there’s Jaxstone in there.”

“Yup. Just a bit we missed. Dirty, so we know it ain’t new.”

Charlotte’s stomach clenched. She could feel the blackness on her skin, itchy and oily and hot, though without her connection to the Eden Grace she knew she was probably imagining it.

“We’ve got a protected room,” Benny said. “S’where you’ll be lookin’ at the Jax.”

Dean held out the box to her, and she took it in both open palms like an offering. For a moment, she truly felt like a god—a backroad folkloric creature with bloody hands and a greedy heart, demanding a gift of something wicked.

 

It knew her.

That was the only thought Charlotte could conjure. She sat in the Winchesters and co.’s protected room (more blood sigils on the door and walls), at their table laden with _equipment_. It was a miasmic sprawl of stuff, like the master bedroom upstairs, but with all its parts intact. She wore gloves, and a mask like Dean’s that sat uncomfortably tight against her forehead. And when she opened the box, and drew out the chunk of Jaxstone, the thought surfaced.

 _It knew her_. Something in the black ink of its surface, swallowing light yet gleaming all the same, told her so. The Jax was an eye without an iris, all solid, absorbing pupil. It was a living thing, a parasite burying its eggs in the living husk of another being. Or perhaps it was the egg, sitting, waiting to devour, while its host scrambled to _cut it out, cut it out, burn the bodies, purge the sick_. 

Either way, Charlotte knew in a moment that the Jax was unkillable. And she knew that it was aware, and laughing.


	14. One Good Night

There were no skin patches in the junk room, so Gabriel’s throat went bare. Charlie, up from the basement, double-checked her stitching after he finished scrubbing himself clean.

“It’s holding up okay,” she said, “but I should probably replace the thread before it has a chance to rot off.”

“No more permanent bonders to be found, huh?”

“Not skin-grade, at least.” She grinned. “I could duct tape you shut if you want.”

Gabriel laughed. “I’ll pass.” As she began to tug out the stitches, brow furrowed in concentration, he asked, “So what’s in the basement?”

“A lab, sort of. ” Charlie shrugged. “For analyzing the Jax. But I was looking through the logs, and it seems like they’ve mostly just been testing how it reacts to different stuff. Dean _baked_ it at one point. Nothing happened.”  

There had been times in the early days of his life when Gabriel had watched Charlotte conduct similar experiments with the then-tiny globe of solid Grace she kept for the archangels. It had been about the size of a baseball, and she’d often carried it around with her—tucked in a pocket or passed between her palms absently when she needed something with which to fiddle. So, often. Sometimes she would scrape off a chip and drop it in a pot of boiling water, or stuff it in the freezer overnight. Lick it, varnish it, leave it smoldering in barbecue coals. The experiments itched—the connection between Charlotte, the archangels, and the Grace was so intimate then that they felt everything to some degree—but it never hurt. And the remains of the Grace shards would be sealed in wax and shut away before Gabriel ever saw them, and Charlotte would swallow her voice but her mind would be muttering.

Charlie began to replace the stitches. Gabriel hummed a dull acknowledgement of what she had said about the logs.

“It’s pretty creepy,” she went on. “Like, it seems like nothing stops it in its solid state. At all. _Something_ should, though, right? Something makes it grow and spread, so something has to suppress that.”

“Of course. And, ah, what does Sam think?”

Charlie snorted.

“Unladylike…”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I just—for cripes’ sake, when did I get stuck with go-between duty? You guys are, like, twelve years old, I swear.” 

“Is it my fault he doesn’t want to—wait, what did he say? Did he say something about me?”

Charlie laughed and said nothing else until she was finished. Then, quietly—“I didn’t want to like you either. Give him time.”

 

Charlotte, along with the other inhabitants of the Winchesters’ house, spent most of the next week at the quarantine wall or the lab. Hannah followed her, as Hannah was wont to do, leaving Gabriel alone in the townhouse most of the time. He didn’t even meet Ash until the third day, when the small man appeared in the kitchen wearing nothing but a ratty crop top and a pair of panties.

“Y’must be on’ o’ th’ ‘bots,” he said around a mouthful of Benny’s bread. Stuck out a hand to shake as he swallowed—his fingernails were painted a chipped black. “M’Ash.”

Ash’s palms were calloused and wide. He had a high, white forehead, heavy-lidded green eyes, and a surprisingly well-kept dirty blond mullet. His panties—pink cotton with a faded heart over the crotch—rode high, exposing buttcheek and the deep red ink of the mandala tattooed in the crease of his hip. Gabriel only examined the tattoo for a split-second, admiring the intricate detail, but a split-second spent staring at a crotch that didn’t request it is nothing less than a small eternity. 

“Get a good look?” Ash raised an eyebrow.

Gabriel gave his hand an extra squeeze and winked. “Whoever gets a close-up of that ink on the regular is a lucky, lucky person.”

Ash laughed. “Benny said you were a smartass. I’ll make sure he gets the memo.”  

“Benny, huh?” Gabriel circled around Ash, grabbing a piece of bread for himself and slathering it in butter. “This place is… ah, pretty accepting. Good to know.”

Ash shrugged. He sat on the island, wiggling his ass on the Formica. “Eh, depends on who you talk to, y’know? It’s all about the procreation out here. Like we got a couple of married patrolwomen, but one of them already had a couple kids and her bits are kaput anyhow. Jo next door’s banged a few girls, but they’ve also banged a few boys, so nobody much cares. Same with Dean and Cas, though, ah, not many people know about them. And as for me and Benny,” he grinned, “well, let’s just say most people still think my full name is Ashlynn.”

As it turned out, Ash née Ashlynn knew more about the New River quarantine than anyone else in the townhouse. He was scaling the wall for samples, lurking on the other side, or holed up in the basement lab testing the Jax more often than not. When he did show himself he was more than happy to talk to Gabriel, who was going slowly stir-crazy in the interim. There was only so much to see in the junkroom, after all.

Gabriel could’ve gone to the wall. He could’ve followed Charlotte, or Castiel, or even Ash around like a bored, attention-starved puppy and been tolerated—perhaps even welcomed. But the situation was hopeless, and Gabriel didn’t see a light at the end of the Jaxstone tunnel. Didn’t see a cause worthy of walling up a mausoleum city. And he itched, and he ached, and he couldn’t bring himself to play along. 

Lucifer was out beyond the city walls. He was _there_ , or else what remained of him. Gabriel entertained the thought of metal bones sticking out of some filthy half-grave in the middle of nowhere. He imagined an android carcass, stripped of flesh and bleeding Grace, the skeletal remains of his wings dragging in the dust—only as long as it took for Lucifer’s face to twist into Michael’s. Michael, who had never clawed his way out of the dark.

In lighter moments, he saw Lucifer with a blackened Third Eye, projecting pitch sigils on his body to protect him from those who would do him harm. Carrying chunks of Jaxstone everywhere he went, or living in a growing patch of it. Maybe he still had hair—or perhaps Michael had ripped it all out, and Lucifer sported his dark new Halo proudly. Wrapped in homespun cloth and eating berries: Lucifer the Robo-Ascetic.

Gabriel couldn’t decide which scenario was more unlikely.

It would’ve been easier, maybe, if he hadn’t come to New River. Gabriel could’ve slipped away—could fly away now, and pray that he wasn’t shot down before he cleared the city’s aim. But he couldn’t leave his mother, and he couldn’t leave Sam. Not that Sam cared. Sam spent his days almost exclusively in the basement, or _out_ who-knew where. Gabriel saw him at breakfast and then in passing during the day; he hid it well, but he was clearly exhausted. The archangel’s heaps of seemingly useless Sam Winchester behavioural data allowed him to pick up on subtle cues—the slight droop in his step, for instance. Then there were less subtle things, like the way he always smelled as if he’d just scoured himself with that sage-scented soap. He’d always been a clean person, but there was something obsessive in the scrubbed-redness of his palms.

Dean and Charlie seemed to notice; they treated Sam the same but they looked at him gingerly, like they were afraid that a direct gaze would blister his skin. Gabriel, meanwhile, wanted to grab him and squeeze him until he gave up the wherefores and whys of his bruised undereyes.

He only asked once—managed to corner Sam in the bathroom of all places by loitering outside the door. Sam stepped out, raw pink and damp from the shower, a towel slung low over his hips. He started and stepped back at the sight of Gabriel blocking his path, his look of surprise quickly dissolving into one of resigned irritation.

“ _Argh_. Fuck, Gabriel, what do you want?”

 _Cold eyes and cold mouth once warm and welcoming to him, long-fingered hands whiteknuckling around the towel, youth-soft curve of stomach over hard muscle rise-and-falling gently with each breath—_ “Well, I wouldn’t say no to you.”

Sam rolled his eyes and stepped around Gabriel with a sigh. “If I didn’t know you’d never been one, I’d call you a child.”

“Wow, and I just came onto you too. Gross.” Gabriel put a hand on Sam’s forearm. “Hold up, cowboy, we need to talk.”

“No, we don’t.” Sam clenched his jaw and made to wrench out of Gabriel’s grip.

Gabriel only squeezed tighter. “You’re bushed, kiddo. I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re running yourself into the fucking ground.”

He would’ve chalked it up to wishful thinking, but Gabriel wasn’t sure he was capable of deliberately misinterpreting data like that—Sam’s eyes definitely softened. His body relaxed, his mouth quirked at the corners.

“I’m fine,” he said, and shrugged Gabriel off with surprising gentleness. He stepped around and Gabriel kept on his tail. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Please, you think I’m worried about you? I’m not worried about you. But you and yours are kinda fiddling around with robot kryptonite and I wanna make sure you’re not, y’know, gonna accidentally Dr. Strangelove us.”

“I can’t believe I understood that sentence. Are you just incapable of referencing anything that came out in the last century?”

“Hey, you’re a nerd, I took a gamble.”

“Could you at least let me get dressed in peace?”

“Not until you promise to take better care of yourself, Samshine. Again. Strangelove, Superman, third pre-apocalyptic pop cultural thing…”

Sam shut the door of his and Dean’s bedroom. He avoided Gabriel much more deliberately from then on.

A week passed. And then another. Sam’s step grew heavier and the days grew longer and Charlotte uncovered precious little about the Jaxstone. Every three days she sent a report back to Campbell through Castiel, and he sent a response the same way. Gabriel never got to read them, but whatever they said only made Charlotte grit her teeth and mutter obscenities under her breath. She kept promising that she’d hit a breakthrough soon, that they’d be out soon, soon, _soon_. Gabriel thought of the Man in the Suit, of the early days of Equin, of trading one purgatory for another. They avoided that similarity when they spoke, just as they avoided the ever-looming date of the next Surge.

Halfway through their third week in New River, dinnertime passed and night fell and everyone but Gabriel was in the basement. He noticed, of course—logged the seconds as they stretched into minutes with no real plan for the data. It wasn’t even habit, just something to do.

Silence, and he was contemplating rooting through the pantry and feeding himself instead of waiting any longer.

Then—cheering.

Gabriel followed the sound halfway down the stairs to the basement, where he nearly crashed into an oncoming Ash.

“We got something,” Ash said, tugging at Gabriel’s arm. “We fucking _got something_ , holy shit!”

 

———

 

Charlotte went into the experiments knowing that she was unlikely to find an answer. In terms of its chemical makeup, Jax appeared to be identical to Grace—what set it apart was the behaviour of its particles. Grace was a repletable resource, though capable of being synthetically reproduced or sanguinely regrown. It behaved as any piece of recognizable matter would when solidified or sublimated. The Jaxstone—the Jaxstone wouldn’t stop moving. It was alive, it was growing, its particles were moving at a speed and with an irregularity natural to a liquid, and yet it was inarguably solid. Its molecules died and replicated at an unheard-of speed, allowing for miniscule observable growth but incalculable micro-activity.

She went through the logs and repeated experiment after experiment, blindly hoping for a new result. There were none to be had. Grace had been tested with it, of course, but direct contact between the two substances caused them both to react violently—the Jax devoured and the Grace fought back, skirmishes of blue and black until, inevitably, the black won out. Grace or blood sigils could hold it back, but they couldn’t destroy it. Nothing else had any affect on the Jax—it was as if it wasn’t even _there_ , as if it were merely pretending to be a tangible thing. Every report that she sent back to Campbell was some variation of _I’ve got nothing_ obscured in technical jargon.

Castiel examined these reports before he delivered them. Nu Militaries had notoriously underdeveloped facial mechanics, but Amelia Novak had poured her heart and soul into the Castiels’ design—they were physically refined to the point that they’d been extremely popular as home security models before their discontinuation. (Not that home security was a big issue in cities full of the wealthy and the numb, but status symbology was a language everyone could speak.) So it was easy to read the grim disapproval in Castiel’s expression at the sight of the third report.

“What?” Charlotte frowned. “Wh-what am I supposed to s-say?”

“I suppose I’m just… disappointed that you’re no closer to solving this than we are.” Castiel sighed. “The Big Man isn’t solely relying on your expertise, you know. If someone else gets the answer before you do…”

Charlotte hunched her shoulders. “I-I know.”

Castiel set his mouth in a thin line. “He has a personal lab. They’re looking at alternative methods… I can’t tell you what those methods are.”

“O-of course not.”

“No.” He gave her a pointed look. “I can’t tell you what they are. But I can tell you that you should use your resources, Charlotte. You have an advantage. Play to it.”

Charlotte straightened up, her frown deepening. “Wh-what adv-vantage? G-Grace doesn’t… doesn’t _do_ anything t-to it except get inf-fected.” And that was the only leg-up she’d had, the only one except—

Except it wasn’t.

She dove into the logs without saying another word, and Castiel left her to it. She scrolled through the lab tablet’s reams of data, jotting down sigils and shorthand on the yellow legal pad she’d been provided for handwritten notes.

 _Blood and Jax and Grace_. Red and black and blue twisted kaleidoscopic behind her eyes, like paint in rippling water. Jax ate up Grace in angels, but humans and animals were being infected too—the only difference was that blood on its own didn’t seem to react at all with Jaxstone, and nobody wanted to risk another outbreak by testing it with organic tissue. Charlotte didn’t either.

Inorganic tissue, on the other hand.

Charlie had kept some of Gabriel’s split flesh, which had had to be removed from the inside of his throat before she could stitch up the wound. _Normally I wouldn’t bother much with wetware,_ she’d said, _but we’d be stupid to throw away_ any _potential resources out here_. Charlotte removed it from its paraffin encasement, then called Hannah over to slice a thin sample. She placed the sample on a slide with a pinch of powdered Jax, stuck it under the lab’s only microscope, and prayed.

Under the microscope, she watched it change.

The Jax particles buried themselves in the smooth muscle, disappearing entirely. The flesh spasmed then settled, and hairline black cracks spread like feathering ink in honeycomb patterns. The muscle bloomed red, like it was alive. The patterns spread to the edges of the sample, then disappeared—they were flowing out. Powder trickled out onto the slide, where it lay inert. And Gabriel’s flesh, in its absence, blackened and went dry.

 _Fuck_.

Hannah placed a gloved hand on Charlotte’s back. “I think it wants more.”

They tried the experiment four more times. Twice to confirm the results of the first, and twice with the additional factor of fresh blood—Charlotte’s, pricked from her fingertip. Instead of flowing out right away, the Jax stayed and attacked the blood, _and the blood_ _fought back_.

Like Grace, it struggled to stay red as the Jax ate it up. The blood lost, and for a moment the sample stayed fresh and red and living before the black pooled out of it.

“A-Angel flesh mimics l-living flesh a-almost perfectly, e-even when removed from the a-angel,” Charlotte muttered as she scribbled the words down. “Th-the Jax mistakes it f-for a viable h-host long enough to sh-show how it reacts to living ti-tissue, and blood wh-when combined with living tissue.”

“And the blood is like Grace, somehow.” Hannah’s voice was tinny through the mask, giving it the sound of a classic movie robot. “It doesn’t want to be infected.”

“I think…” Charlotte put down her pen. “I th-think the Jax, ah, it’s so similar t-to Grace that it… it’s _offended_ b-by it, somehow. L-like it needs t-to take it over and m-make it like itself.”

Hannah’s brow furrowed. They’d been getting better at expressing discomfort since arriving in New River, and Charlotte didn’t want to think about what that meant. “It isn’t alive, Charlotte. It can’t be offended.”

 _It knew, it knew, it knew_.

“Y-yeah.” Charlotte shook her head. “You’re right, I’m, uh, I’m n-not… I’m too used to d-dealing with things that can think, heh.”

 _Don’t lie to them. Warn them. You know it’s watching you, watching you both_.

The following day, Charlotte told Benny, Sam, and Charlie what she and Hannah had decided should be their next step. They had to combine the three things—blood and Jax and Grace. But Grace could only be found in scraps in New River. Its solid source was small and kept by Campbell, replenished by randomly selected bleeders whose offerings only worked for a week at a time. Most of it was in the outer and quarantine walls, and those, Charlotte was informed, were untouchable.

“We bought the sample we used for the last experiment from a harvester,” Benny said. “That’s all run out.”

 “A harvester?” Sam asked. Charlotte was surprised to hear him speak—he rarely did, unless pressed.

“Scavenging folk. Travel settlement to settlement sellin’ whatever usable junk they’ve found out in the wilds.” Benny sighed. “An’ they don’t run on nobody’s schedule but their own. No tellin’ when the next’ll pull into town.”

Charlotte clenched her fists. _Fuck me stupid; of course this is where it ends_.

She contented herself by tidying her notes and entering them into the tablet logs. Rather, she held herself in one piece by doing so—there was nothing content about the way she couldn’t make her leg stop jittering, or her teeth stop grinding. With nothing else to do but wait, Charlie and Benny had left for the wall. Sam and Hannah remained quiet presences in the lab, Sam off in the corner immersed in older, water-damaged handwritten notes and Hannah stalwart at Charlotte’s side. Gabriel… Gabriel was sulking somewhere above their heads, determined to be uninvolved and miserable.

“I h-hate this,” Charlotte declared, saving the complete log and turning off the tablet. Glared at the mask beside her, as if it were its fault that she had no reason to don it. “F-finally a breakthrough, a-and now _th-this_ , m-more fucking w-waiting!”

Hannah pressed in against her, resting their head against Charlotte’s and aligning their curves, flush and warm. One hand caught Charlotte by the hip, holding her there. Charlotte leaned into the embrace, turned her face towards the angel and inhaled—Hannah’s candlesmoke smell, combined with the sheen of sage and blood, had morphed into something heady and sweet, like honeycomb wax.

“Waiting won’t be so terrible this time,” Hannah said.

“Wh-what makes you say that?”

“I’m trying to provide comfort.”

Charlotte laughed—to her surprise, so did Sam. Both she and Hannah turned to stare at him, and the smile melted from his face.

“Hey, c’mon,” Charlotte said. “A-are we re-really that bad?”

Sam shrugged, mouth set and brows drawn. “You’re helping, so thanks, but it doesn’t mean I have to like you.”

“Y-yeah, guess not, but th-that doesn’t mean you can’t find us funny. W-we’re funny, I w-went out of my way to program funny.” She thought of Raphael and suppressed a flare of guilt. “O-or at l-least the cap-capacity for it.”

He scoffed. “I guess you did.”

“Gabriel’s funny.”

Sam shut the notebook, his jaw twitching. “Gabriel loves the sound of his own voice and making people uncomfortable.”

Hannah loosened their grip on Charlotte and led her towards the wooden bench that lined the wall near Sam’s chair. The two of them sat down cautiously, so as not to spook the suddenly talkative Winchester. “Both of those things are true,” Hannah said. “However, I don’t believe they necessarily preclude humour.”

“I mean, w-we all know he d-doesn’t know when to shut up.” Charlotte’s mouth twitched. “H-he’s, ah, always b-been like that. It’s honestly a g-good thing he’s an archangel or he’d m-most likely be dead by now.”

Sam was openly glaring now. The stitches and healing marks on his face seemed to fade as his colour rose. “Are you kidding? His crap nearly got him killed _as_ an archangel. The son of a bitch—uh, no offense.”

“I-it’s figurative, I get it.”

“He just can’t stop digging, he can’t stop _pushing_.” Sam gave a bitter laugh. “He pushed me into whatever it was we had and then he pushed me out of it again.”

Charlotte frowned. “H-he was just f-following orders. Unt-til, y’know, h-he stopped. L-last I checked, that’s wh-what you were doing, too.”

Silence, and Charlotte watched Sam’s mouth twist and fall and rise tight. Young hands clenching white—and he was so young, and so angry, and Charlotte could hardly remember what it felt like to be that angry. To feel trapped to the point of violence instead of to the point of helplessness. She knew she had been, once.

“H-how long were you alone?” she asked quietly.

Sam’s gaze snapped to her, eyes deer-in-headlights wide. “What?”

“In E-Eden. I-I know you were, uh, a-alone after Dean left. But h-how long was it again?”

Another, shorter silence. Sam’s voice was small when he answered, “Three years.”

Charlotte nodded. “S-sucks, doesn’t it? Th-the only one of your k-kind, or close to it, stuck and l-lonely… y-you’d do anything to get o-out. Up to and incl-cluding pretending t-to be human for a while, o-or doing a crazy favour f-for someone you love.”

“Heh. You’re really not all that subtle, are you?”

“What c-can I say? I-it runs in the family.”

Sam closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them again, and they were wet and gleaming and determined. He stood up and crossed the room in a long loping stride, snatching up a pair of masks and holding one out to Charlotte. “C’mon, Shurley. Get your gear on, we’re going over.”

“Sorry, w-we’re _what_?”

He smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “You need Grace, and there’s a crapload of it on the far wall of the quarantine. We’re going over and getting you some so you can fix this.”

 

It was colder inside the quarantine. Though it was still balmy by Charlotte’s standards, the temperature dropped several degrees the moment she climbed over, and it was the sort of drop that hung heavy off your bones. The sky overhead was the same. The light was the same. But sound seemed muffled, blurred—when Charlotte touched down, her boots scraped in the rubble with a noise like the grinding of teeth. 

They’d used a bungee cord pulley system to get over, far out of sight of the official crossing area. Charlotte didn’t ask Sam why he’d already had the pulley set up, or why he was leading her along a very specific path made up of seemingly random twists and turns. He took her down streets lined with Jaxstone clusters that had taken root in gutters, in windowsills, in patches of soft earth between broken chunks of concrete. Matte and pitch in the shade, glittering oily in the sunlight, numbing the air around it. They didn’t see or hear a single person, but scraggly brown things that might’ve once been rats scurried in and out of the city’s cracks in a steady flow.

In places, the walls were stained with smeared brown handprints and spatters. Even through the masks, the place smelled faintly of old meat.

They walked for a half hour before they came to the far city wall. Its sigils were faded but still sputtering, the Grace ether likely on its last legs, but it would do.

“G-gotta just… c-cut a chunk out,” Charlotte muttered. “H-hand me that knife?”

Sam did. She stabbed it into the wood of the wall, wiggling and whittling until she had pried a sigil loose. It was one of a few weak protective symbols that littered this eye-level portion of the wall, a variation on a standard bit of reinforcement code that, as far as Charlotte could tell, was more talismanic than practical in its current form.

“O-okay,” she said, bagging the wood and turning back around, “shall we—uh, S-Sam?”

His back was to her; he was facing the cracked façade of one of the outer perimeter buildings, a split up its middle sprouting Jax grounded by black tendrils like ivy. The base of the split was a chalky pyramidal hole stuffed with rubble—and the soft sound of something rooting around inside.

Charlotte froze. “Sh-shit.”

Sam drew a long, vicious-looking hunting knife, knees bent like he was readying a charge. “Quiet,” he hissed over his shoulder. “Start moving, and stay behind me.”

 Step, step, slow and clumsy. Charlotte kept her eyes glued to the hole, her ears trained to the snuffle-skid-crunch of whatever was moving within. Sam turned with her—

And then he stopped. Lowered the knife, relaxed his body. He turned to Charlotte and a muffled laugh pushed its way out of the mask.

“It’s okay,” he said, sheathing the knife. “It’s all right, I know who it is.”

He patted his thigh and whistled. A moment later the snuffle-skid-crunch grew louder, and a bedraggled dog-creature emerged from the hole.

Charlotte let out a low breath. The animal was nearly hip-height on Sam, looking something like a pale gold greyhound like the ones they’d seen upon entering New River. Its coat was patchy and thin, bitten-raw flesh visible around its paws and haunches. As Charlotte approached she noticed a gash above its right eye, still pink but clearly healing. It let out a bark that sounded closer to that of a seal than a Pre-Fall dog and pushed its snout into Sam’s outstretched hand, huffing happily as Sam began to pet.

“This is Harley,” Sam said. There was a liveliness to his tone that Charlotte had never heard before, a boyish joy that stuck in her heart. “I met her when I came over the first time—poor girl, I think her owners got…” He cleared his throat. “I don’t think they made it.”

Harley kept her body pressed against Sam’s legs as she turned her attentions to Charlotte, sniffing at her crotch. The dog—she would call it a dog for now—whuffled and licked Charlotte’s pant leg in a gesture that Charlotte took as acceptance. She’d never spent much time with Pre-Fall dogs, though she’d bothered her parents endlessly for one. But Momma was allergic, and Daddy and Omar had particularly unsociable cats, and by the time Charlotte could’ve afforded one herself she was too busy to care for a pet. She gave Harley a scratch behind the ear, and grinned, wide and involuntary, at the way the dog melted into her touch.

“What a g-good girl,” she cooed. She hadn’t _cooed_ in years. Sam followed suit, murmuring babytalk nothings and patting Harley down.

“She’s looking _so_ much better,” he said, and Charlotte could hear the smile in his voice. “I brought over some medicine for her the other day, this cut over her eye was infected. But look at her now, yes, you’ve been healin’ up good for me, haven’t you, baby girl?”

Charlotte gave the dog another scratch. “Y-you’ve been… sneaking aw-way for her this wh-whole time?”

“I—yeah.” Sam shuffled his weight from foot to foot. “And, ah, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone.”

“S-sure, but how c-come? I-It’s not like y-you’re t-taking her out of the quarantine.”

“Well, technically I’m not supposed to be _in_ the quarantine myself.” Sam cleared his throat. “Dean doesn’t want me over here.”

“Wh-why the hell not?”

With the mask in the way it was difficult to see what it represented, but Charlotte felt a shift in Sam, then—some seismic change, like all his internal parts had turned and taken on new axes of movement. His organic wetware was twisted, moaning, scarred to the ivory gloss of his bones. And at the same time it was explosively relaxing, a letting out of air, an expansion of belly, like he’d been holding himself in place until Charlotte asked her question. She couldn’t say how she sensed the shift, or what it even _was_. Harley whined and pressed her face against Sam’s hand again—she felt it too, Charlotte was certain.

“Overexposure,” Sam said finally. “He didn’t like how close I was to the Jaxstone in Eden, he doesn’t want me to.”

For a moment Charlotte thought she was going crazy ( _crazier_ ), that she’d missed the point of the sentence. Then it clicked that no, Sam actually _had_ stopped talking in the middle of a thought.

“D-doesn’t want you to what?” She took a half-step towards him. “Sam?”

He turned and pointed to something over her head. Charlotte looked—saw a small mound of packed earth by the wall, topped with a stone. The stone had been marked with a white sketched cross.

“Doesn’t want me to wind up like them,” Sam said.

 

They made their way back to the quarantine wall and Sam’s secret pulley. Sam brought Harley midway through the fringes of the ghost town, stopping at a burned-out building that he’d outfitted into a shelter. There was a small pit full of rags and topped with a lean-to roof, a plastic bucket that Sam refilled with water from a nearby ground pump, and a hanging sack of dry, New River-made dog food that he emptied into a second covered pit.

“I try to come back at least once a day, make sure she’s fed and watered,” he told Charlotte as he gave Harley one last pat goodbye. “When I first found her she was huddled up right here—I think she’s too traumatized to go looking for the other survivors for help.”

Charlotte laughed, more than a little bitterly. “I-I can relate.”

Sam snorted. The two of them picked their way out of Harley’s husk of a home and kept walking. “Your survivors stuck you in a tower and made you God. You didn’t _need_ to ask for anything.”

A beat, and Charlotte frowned. ( _Thick heavy scent of blood, taut aching sound of screams, everyone is gone and dead and gone and—blast, so loud and then silence_.

 _Lucifer’s voice in her head, the last thing she hears from him before the breakdown—_ _LIVE FATTED AND BELOVED IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN; JUST IGNORE THE BLOOD AND YOU’LL BE FINE_.)

Her throat burned with bile. She stopped dead in her tracks—Sam followed suit, turning full towards her as if he were actually concerned.  

“L-look, Sam,” she said, hating the fact that she was fighting tears, “I c-can’t change the past. B-but for f-fuck’s sake, you _have_ t-to give me a chance to m-make up for it. Why is that so hard for you to d-do?”

Quiet, long and miserable. Sam’s voice, when he spoke, was smaller than she would have expected. “Because if I forgive you, it’ll be like it never happened. It’ll all have been for nothing.”

The deep hitch in his throat implied the hidden plural _you_ —or perhaps the singular, spoken to the wrong person. Charlotte left it alone.  

They hit the wall and climbed over in silence. Charlotte touched down first, scrambling to unfasten the mask and take a breath. She blinked against the sudden brightness of the world—she hadn’t noticed a change when she was in the quarantine, but now that she was back everything seemed to be flush with colour, intense and burning. Warmth prickled her cheeks, sounds were sharp again. She didn’t understand how Dean and Ash could go over so often and come back unburdened by the transition.

She was still shaky and maladjusted once back inside the lab, protective gear on once more and her equipment sitting before her. Hannah had already prepared the flesh sample and the powdered Jax, and Charlotte added her own blood to the slide—all that was left was to extract the Grace ether from the sigiled wood. Even dimmed as it was, its blue-white glow was an electric needle jabbing at Charlotte’s eyes.

Hannah and Sam watched over her shoulder as she placed two bare fingers on the sigil, tracing its rim. Ran once around the circle, then in a looping X across its middle. On the pullback, a thin tendril of blue followed her fingers. Like a living comet’s tail, the lightsmoke chased Charlotte hand through the air, stopping when she stopped, curling around her skin. It was ice-cold and smooth as silk.

Charlotte allowed herself a moment of play, twirling the ether in figure eights before guiding it towards the slide. The Grace settled into the meat—just disappeared, leaving the sample with a vaguely metallic sheen but nothing more. Charlotte peered through the microscope as she added the powdered Jax, breath hitching in her throat.

 _Oh please let this be it_.

For a long, agonizing moment it looked like it wasn’t going to work. The black spread as before. The new-bloodied flesh fought back, but the black spread all the same. And then—

And then white.

The spiderweb tracks of the Jax began to turn white, then black, then white again—pulse, pulse, then the cracks faded and Gabriel’s old skin glowed hot living red.

It stayed that way.

Charlotte watched for a solid two minutes before she was satisfied. Blinked and leaned back in her chair, still staring at the sample. Then she laughed.

“Oh m-my god.” The laughter bubbled up brighter and clearer than it had in a long time. “Oh my _god_ , fuck, w-we did it. Grace and fresh blood, th-that’s—holy shit!”

She tore off her mask and laughed even harder. In the corner of her eye she saw Hannah slowly unbuckling their own mask, and the moment they had Charlotte threw her arms around their neck and kissed their cheek sloppily.

“I-it’s not ruined.” She grinned against Hannah’s skin and held them tighter. “F-fuck…”

Hannah returned the hug in kind. “I never doubted you for a moment, Charlotte.”

Charlotte’s smile widened. “O-of course you didn’t.”

Sam, also maskless now and beaming, patted her shoulder stiffly. “I’ll get the others,” he said. “They have to see this!”

Soon the lab was full again. Charlotte showed everyone the neutralized sample, then set up a second slide to demonstrate. Her audience took turns glancing through the microscope as the flesh pulsed, and when it settled, Ash, the last one to look, let out a whoop. The room erupted into claps and cheers.

Somewhere in the blur of congratulations, Gabriel found his way into the lab. He stayed at the edge of the room, looking bored even as Ash filled him in on what had happened and what it meant.

“So you guys need a fuckton of Grace enemas on hand, is what you’re saying,” he said. “What, you planning on raiding Eden?” 

“We’ll figure it out.” Dean shrugged. “Important thing is, we got the cure, right?”

Charlotte nodded, but truth be told, she’d been wondering the same thing. New River’s Grace source was small and only barely renewable, and if they only ever got fresh material from the unpredictable harvesters…

She shook it off. _Not my problem, I solved it, I’ve done my part. Now maybe I can move on from this place_.

 

The rest of the room decided they were going to go out and celebrate, and Charlotte opted to stay behind and have a much-needed shower. She stepped out in the comfiest clothes she had and curled up on the spring-sagging couch in the living room with a tablet, thick slices of buttered bread, and a mug of some strange, bittersweet tea. The tablet had the word _Reader_ scribbled on the back, and its hard drive was stocked with books—some Pre-Fall classics, and some attributed to New River authors. Charlotte picked one at random and settled in.

She wasn’t sure how long it had been before Hannah appeared at her side.

“Charlotte.” They looked, for a flash, convincingly grim. “I need to show you something.”

Charlotte blinked. Her brain was a numb blank, then _click_ and it flooded with guilt and a sickening coil of fear. Of course, she should’ve known better than to let her guard down, to think she could relax, to think she could have one good goddamn night.

“Y-yeah?”

Hannah got down on their knees in front of her. Brows knit, mouth set, hands immobile on their thighs. Just knelt there, quiet and still and staring at Charlotte like they wanted her to tell them what to do.

Finally, they leaned up and forward and pressed their lips to her cheek.

It was a soft kiss, chaste and long. Hannah stayed there for what seemed like forever, and Charlotte felt the floor drop out from under her. She had no legs, no fingertips, no belly. There was nothing but Hannah’s mouth on her skin, and Hannah’s warmth, and Hannah. For the first time in her life, Charlotte wanted desperately to grab someone and kiss them dizzy. As was her wont, she remained frozen until Hannah finally— _don’t go, stay here_ —pulled away.

Hannah smiled. Actually managed an honest-to-god smile. “I enjoyed when you did it to me, so I thought it logical that I try it myself.”

Charlotte let out a heavy breath. “W-well, you’re a natural.”

Hannah continued to smile as they got to their feet. The moment their back was turned, Charlotte brought a hand to her cheek and tried not to laugh out loud like a giddy child.

One goddamn good night, indeed.


	15. Tarred

The only pub in New River had no name. Shoved in the shells of three clearly delineated storefronts merged together, the sole indication that it was in fact a tavern was a painted beer stein on a hanging sign out front. A second sign marked with a bed hung beneath, presumably marking it as a composite inn, though Gabriel had to wonder exactly how many new patrons they actually received.

The moment the door opened, their party was struck by a wall of heat. Aside from a handful of dimming electric bulbs over the bar, the main light sources were candlelit chandeliers and a pair of large fireplaces. Over one fireplace, a woman with a ruddy face and sooty hands was turning a spit of dripping, carved meat. Over the other, a young boy tasted stew out of a cast iron pot half his size. The floor was crowded with people of all ages, laughing and chatting over platters of food. An ancient jukebox was serenading the patrons with “Radio Ga Ga”. Gabriel felt another restless, guilty pang—Lucifer had always had a thing for Queen. They both had.

He felt eyes on him as he stepped inside. Angry ones, and an added layer of heat. A middle-aged man by the door fiddled with something under his table—a surge of energy told Gabriel that it was one of those electrified blades. He kept his gaze trained to a spot between Benny’s shoulderblades to avoid the man’s glare.

Dean led them to an empty corner, where the group split off to occupy a booth and an adjacent table that Castiel dragged closer. Gabriel slipped himself between Sam and Garth the clothier, who’d been invited along, bumping Sam’s shoulder with his elbow as they settled into the booth.

“Sorry for the squeeze, Sammich.” He grinned, and only grinned wider when Sam scowled back.

“I haven’t been out to eat in a long while,” Garth chirped, seemingly oblivious to Sam’s discomfort. “It’s a real treat!”

Beside him, his wife Bess nodded serenely. She was a sweet-faced woman, blonde and quietly pretty. She hadn’t said anything, but Gabriel had identified her as a mech hybrid like Benny and Garth. “I’m just glad we have something to celebrate for once. Benny told us how hard y’all’ve been workin’.”

“‘S jus’ a shame Ms. Shurley didn’t come out,” Benny said. He and Ash were sitting opposite Dean and Castiel at the table. “Would’a liked to congratulate her properly.”

“Yeah, toast to the Tar Queen,” Charlie added. She was squished on Sam’s other side and had one arm slung around his shoulders.

Gabriel waved a hand. “Trust me, she’d hate this. Crowds _and_ attention from more than two people at a time? She’d combust.”

Castiel huffed amusedly. “I’m afraid Gabriel is right. It’d be better to speak to Charlotte when we get back home.”

A dark-haired boy approached the group—he looked to be about twelve, his nose nubbish and his face puppy-fat round. The grease-stained apron around his waist betrayed him as waitstaff.

“Hey, Dean,” he drawled, as enthusiastic as one would expect a twelve-year-old waiter to be. “Drinks an’ dines for everybody?”

“Please and thanks.” Dean reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair, smirking at his obvious annoyance. “How’s your mom, Ben?”

“Go on back and ask her yourself, you loser.” Ben wrinkled his nose, breaking into a small smile. “She was talking about you the other day. She talks about you a lot, actually, it’s kinda gross.”

Dean shrugged, shooting Castiel a hapless look that the angel did not return. “What can I say? I leave an impression. A hole not many men can fill.”

“ _So_ gross.” Ben glanced up and caught sight of Gabriel, and his eyes widened. “Oh, holy shit, you’re that new ‘bot everybody’s talking about, aren’t you?”

“Hey,” Dean snapped, “watch your language.”

“And keep your voice down,” Sam added.

Gabriel scoffed. “What, like nobody’s figured it out already? I’m a new face and Garth knew we were here a day in. The whole damn town knows who’s coming to dinner, Sam.” He winked at Ben. “The Archangel Gabriel, at your service.”

The boy tensed. Rubbed the side of his nose violently and hunched his shoulders. “Creepy. He looks realer than Cas.”

Castiel looked decidedly unimpressed with the declaration, and Gabriel burst out laughing. “Don’t _say_ that in front of him, jeez, kiddo!”

Ben cracked another fleeting smile before scurrying away. He came back some fifteen minutes later with a slightly older brunette girl in tow, also wearing an apron. Each of them were toting full trays. The girl made eye contact with Gabriel as she slid him his platter of food and full mug, her gaze steely and defiant. _I’m not afraid of you_. Gabriel thanked her.

The food consisted of a cut of the spitroasted meat—tender, visibly juicy, and lightly charred—a bowl of thick vegetable stew, and two slices of dark bread. The mug was brimming with an oily-looking cocktail of bathtub gin and muddled berries.

“To the Queen!” Charlie raised her mug and the rest of the two tables followed suit.

The drink went down dry and hot and sour. Dean winced as his mug landed. “God, I miss beer.”

If the alcohol was a disappointment, the food certainly wasn’t. Whatever animal the meat had come from, it was peppery, well-marbled, and melted like butter on the tongue. The stew was hot and savoury, thick with onion—or something like it—and mushrooms and some sort of reddish-purple thing that tasted like salty zucchini. The bread was sweet on its own and heavenly dipped in the broth. Gabriel was fairly certain it was one of the best meals he’d ever had.

His enjoyment of it, however, was mitigated by the fact that the rest of the damn pub couldn’t seem to keep their eyes off him. Ben and his companion were watching him from across the room. The man by the door was no longer the only one with an unsheathed weapon—some kept theirs out of sight, but others were openly fiddling with hunting knives and miniature electric quarterstaffs, pretending they weren’t puffing out their chests. One woman was even picking her teeth with the point of a dagger. Of course, these were the outliers. Most were kind enough to just clutch the handles of their weapons instead of drawing them, or keep their heads down altogether, but the room was on edge nonetheless.  

“You’ll learn t’ignore ‘em.”

Gabriel glanced at Garth, who had spoken, and chuckled. “I’ve been around for more than a hundred years, Twizzler. After a while, being hated kinda stops bugging you.”

Beside him, Sam shifted and cleared his throat.

Garth smiled sadly, his big eyes watery and sympathetic. “If you been around that long, then you know that’s a crock o’ crap.”

Gabriel took another gulp of sour gin. Garth elbowed him gently.

“It never stops,” he said, “but it helps if ya find your own crowd, y’know? I’ve had Bess since before I came here, and I know I wouldn’t have made it without her.” He gripped his wife’s hand, and Bess lifted his knuckles to her lips. “She doesn’t make ‘em go away, but she sure makes ‘em easier to face.”  

Sam was warm pressed against Gabriel’s side, his blood humming lively under his skin.

The party finished their food in relative peace. Dean ordered another round of drinks before the end, and Gabriel consumed his more for the sake of the fuel provided by the berries than any actual desire to taste more gin. Charlie and Sam, both of their faces flushed pink, were giggling over some private joke. Ash and Dean were comparing notes on the Jax growth—Benny was fiddling with a napkin, his cheek pressed against the top of Ash’s head. Castiel was watching Dean with an expression something like serenity. The Fitzgeralds were leaning on one another sleepily, smiling like dopes. Gabriel thought of Charlotte, in the townhouse with her Hannah. His mind wandered to Raphael, alone in Eden, no doubt furiously mopping up the mess they’d left behind. Then again to Lucifer alone who knew where, decaying and abandoned. Again to Michael, alone in death.

If Gabriel was going stag tonight, at least he was in good company.

He knocked back the last of his drink and lowered his mug to the sight of three people bursting through the pub doors and making a beeline straight for their table.

Bug-Eyes was among them, lip twitching in a pathetic snarl. He skulked behind Oz, and a stocky, older woman with a shaved head. 

Dean didn’t notice them until they were upon him. He greeted them with a half-assed wave.

“What’s up, guys?”

“You’ve got some nerve bringing that thing out, Dean,” the woman said, jabbing a thick finger at Gabriel. “It’s bad enough Lisa lets the war ‘bot and the scrappies in here.”

Bess flinched at the word _scrappies_ , and Garth squeezed her shoulder, frowning.

“You’d best curb that shit, Connie,” Ash spat.

Connie glared at him. “Wanna make me, you little junkslut?”

Ash, Dean, Castiel, and Benny all stood at the same time, pushing back their chairs, the humans puffing their chests like apes. Oz stepped in front of Connie, who looked ready to unsheathe the long knife hanging from her belt.

“Let’s nobody lose their heads,” he said, holding up his hands. “Dean. The Big Man said house arrest.”

“No, he _strongly suggested_ house arrest.” Dean flashed a broad and wildly insincere smile. “And hey, Gabriel’s _my_ charge, okay? It’s none of your damn business where I take him, so how about you back the fuck off, huh?”

“It becomes our business,” Connie growled, “when you let tarred, tin-boned scum break bread at our tables!”

Garth shot to his feet. “ _Hey!_ ”

The ringing almost-silence after his outcry had a life of its own. A straggled stream of people was beginning to creep out of the pub in a hushed shuffle, mostly the families with children. The others were frozen, either keeping their gazes trained on their tables or gaping openly at the scene before them. The waitstaff cowered behind the bar, including the boy who’d been stirring the stewpot. At the other fireplace, the ruddy-faced woman kept turning the spit—but even from a distance, Gabriel could see the tension in her frame.

Connie sneered. “Those enhancements’re making you stupid, Fitzgerald. Unless you _wanna_ be kicked to shit in front of your wife.”

Garth’s fists trembled at his sides. Bess rubbed the small of his back.

“She’s not worth it, baby,” she said. “Don’t give her what she wants.”

Garth’s slender frame was still shaking, but he lowered himself back into his seat all the same. Connie grinned nastily, but before she could throw anything else at the hapless clothier, Gabriel stood up on the booth couch and spread his arms wide.

“Let’s not make this any messier than it has to be, okay?” He stepped over Sam and Charlie’s laps and skooched around the table, coming face to face with Connie. “I was just leaving, sunshine.”

“Not to roam the streets unchecked, you’re not.” Bug-Eyes bobbed his ugly little head into view. “We’ll take ya home, make sure you don’t get into trouble.”

“Aw.” Gabriel smiled and patted his cheek. “I’m flattered, but I’m a modern woman, baby. I don’t need an escort.”

Bug-Eyes snarled. Connie grabbed Gabriel’s wrist and yanked it down, her face red and angry.

“I should rip you to pieces,” she hissed. “You’re a bad deal away from being junked for parts, _you don’t get to talk to us like that_.”

Gabriel kept smiling. He wrenched his arm free with little difficulty and dusted himself off, never breaking eye contact with his antagonizer. “Bad or not, that deal means I’m a free agent, and you gotta keep your hands off me. Unless you wanna explain to Campbell why you shat all over his agreement with the woman who’s about to save your collective ass.”

Connie blinked. After a moment’s pause, her eyes narrowed and her cheeks appled, and her mouth split as she hacked out a broad, bitter laugh. She lunged forward, and her thick hands closed around Gabriel’s throat so that both thumbs dug into Charlie’s stitches. He struggled, then suddenly there was too much pressure on the wrong thing and his body seized up as alarms rang through his head.

— _pain pain critical damage imminent pain imminent imminent_ —

“The Big Man’s nearly got it,” Connie said, loud for the whole room to hear. “He’s told us so. Your Queen Bitch of a builder’s nothin’ but a failsafe. And the second she bombs, you and all your kind are meat. Meat and scrap!”

“Drop him!” That was Sam, _Sam Sam Sam_ , rising like a miracle in the corner of Gabriel’s eye.

And Charlie, overlapping—“Shurley solved the Jax already! We’re sending the report in the morning, she figured it out!”

The pub was drowned in excited muttering.

“ _Lies! Lies!_ ” someone squawked.

Connie shook her head viciously. “She hasn’t, not possible. The Big Man…”

“Very possible, actually.” Dean’s voice was level, but it was obvious he was struggling to keep it that way. “Let him go, Connie, _now_.”

Connie’s face was all Gabriel could see. Confused and furious and unsure. Her grip tightened around his neck for a moment—

Just for a moment.

Then her hands were gone, and Gabriel reeled, caught his balance at the last second before he would’ve toppled over. Connie crashed into a vacant table with a pained grunt.

And Sam stood over her, chest heaving.  

“I said,” he panted, “ _drop him_.”

This time the room really did go dead silent. Sam looked like he had when he first saw Samandriel at the _Grain de Café_ —violent and furious and tight, only now the expression was exacerbated almost to the point of barely-checked mania. His fists were up, his cheeks red, his nostrils flaring wide.

Connie stared up at him. The mingled terror and disbelief on her face melted into pure rage, and with a scream she stumbled to her feet and launched herself at Sam.

He knocked her back with a tap.

Gabriel blinked. Replayed the moment a few times in his mind just to be sure. Connie crashed back into the downed table hard enough to splinter it. She groaned and rolled in the wreckage, leaned up on her elbows and spat blood on the floor—when she screamed a garbled curse at Sam, Gabriel saw that she had bit through part of her tongue. And Sam had _barely touched her_.

Sam seemed to realize this at the same time, and at the sight of Connie’s bloody mouth the wild light left his expression. He staggered back a step, glancing between his victim and his hands with horror blooming in his eyes.

“F-fuck, I’m s—” he began, but he didn’t get a chance to finish.

The pub erupted out of its frozen quiet and collectively barreled towards Sam. Dean and Castiel and the others had just enough time to get to their feet before their fellow patrons descended upon him, and then everything was chaos.

A flurry of hands and feet and knives—Gabriel was grabbed and shoved from behind, towards a young man holding a blade in front of his face. Gabriel swatted his hand away and sidestepped his retaliatory blow. He continued to duck and weave through the fight, dodging attacks and doing his best not to return them.

The sound of smashing glass, and someone yelled, “ _Tarred fucker_!” Gabriel watched Benny knock a woman on her ass for coming at Ash with a chair. Charlie kidney-punched a man brandishing a broken bottle—only to get kicked in the ribs for her troubles. 

A woman by the bar bellowed for everyone to get out of her damn pub. Two people slipped out of the throng to help her, screaming over the din for everyone to _stop, stop, stop_! A handful of others tried to pull their friends out of the skirmish to varying degrees of success.

Gabriel continued to move through the crowd, trying to evade his way to Sam. Sam—Gabriel couldn’t get a solid look at him—he ducked a descending knife— _fuck, where’d Sam go_?

He saw him, finally, taking a right hook from Oz at the fringes of the fight. Dean threw himself at Oz, and Gabriel took advantage of the moment to push out to Sam and grab him by the wrist.

“Gabriel, what—”

“Crouch, kiddo, and follow me.”

Sam tugged his hand away. Easily, considering Gabriel was holding him as tight as he could without injuring him. “No! I started this, I’m staying!”

Gabriel rolled his eyes, dipped back into the fray and spread his wings.

They burst out of his back in a long fluid motion, every feather and joint whirring and clicking into place. Several people were whacked aside, others scrambling away from their adversaries to get out of the way. The metal gleamed in the firelight, gold and bright. Gabriel flapped his wings once—twice. Those who hadn’t already stopped fighting stumbled back at the force of the movement.

“Okay,” Gabriel said into the stunned silence. “Everybody I came in with, get the hell out.”

Behind him, he heard them doing as he asked. He looked to the door, making sure they were all out before he nodded at the woman behind the bar.

“Bill Dean for the damage,” he said. “Real sorry about all this—unavoidable, you know how it goes. Food was delicious, by the way. As for the rest of you…” He shrugged, sheathing his wings as quickly as they’d come out. “I really wish I could say it’s been a pleasure. Ciao!”

He fled before anyone had a chance to say another word. 

 

The back porch of the townhouse boasted a pair of plastic patio loungers, which proved surprisingly comfortable. Lying on one, Gabriel had a full view of the clear night sky. He catalogued constellations, sketched out the borders of thin clouds as they passed over the stars. The muffled sounds of harsh voices seeped out from behind the door—Sam and Dean were still going at it over an hour later. Gabriel, like everyone else in the house, had stuck around at first, thought they were owed some scrap of an explanation. But after a while it became too difficult to keep listening, and they’d dissipated.

A few more minutes, and the noise inside came to a ringing halt. One body retreated, while the other—ah, Sam—came to join Gabriel on the porch. Sam took a deep breath of night air, the moonlight silvering his hair, the slope of his nose, his dark lashes. He didn’t flinch, didn’t even turn when Gabriel spoke:

“So Jax-infections are the new radioactive spider bites, huh?”

“I guess so.”

“And you have no clue why it hasn’t killed you, or—”

“—twisted me up beyond recognition? Nope.” Sam sat on the other lounger, hands hanging limply between his gangling legs. “Dean knew I’d been, uh, exposed. But he thought I was just lucky, since I hadn’t succumbed. Not everyone does, just… most.”

Gabriel nodded. A wisp of cloud covered the moon, uncovered it again. “Did it happen in Eden?”

“Just before… before we left, yeah.”

Sam let out a long sigh and leaned back, settled in to recline in the lounger. He splayed his hands across his stomach, his shirt riding up to expose a stretch of belly. Tapped his fingers against his bare skin, producing a dull, arrhythmic beat.

“I keep thinking about that day,” he said, quietly. “About Samandriel.”

Gabriel frowned. “Yeah. Poor kid.”

“No, I mean… I didn’t realize… I knew that angels weren’t all bad. I knew about Cas. But I still set him apart in my head, like he was okay because he was a completely different breed than the rest of you, like he wasn’t an angel at all.” He paused. “But Samandriel didn’t deserve that kind of violence. And you…”

Gabriel snickered. “Well, I mean, I probably would’ve deserved it.”

Sam didn’t laugh, but Gabriel heard a smile in his voice when he spoke next. “Sure. Still, you…” He sighed again. “I just remember the way you felt, after. The way you held me. It hurt you, and you needed me to make it stop hurting, and I haven’t been able to get that out of my head.”

Gabriel breathed. “Oh.”

“I guess that’s what made me snap tonight. You were trying to _leave_ , you were trying to stop the fight, but the fight found you anyway.” He turned his head, and Gabriel mirrored him. Sam’s eyes shone in the starlight. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to cut and run, just leave Dean and Campbell and their fucking _causes_ in the dust. But now that I’m out here, now that I can’t go back, I realized… I can’t escape it any more than you can.” 

They lay there for precisely thirteen minutes and forty-six seconds, every agonizing moment tick ticking and tallied in Gabriel’s mind as he debated reaching out, getting up, moving towards the man who drew him in so unfairly, so completely. Above, the late-summer sky gleamed, the stars like pinpricks of light through cheesecloth. It was so much clearer out here than in Eden, even with the intermittent clouds. The night sounded with the high shrieks of bats, crawling out of eaves and attics to feast.

“I think I’m going crazy.”

Gabriel sat up. “What, because of the Jax? You’re fine, though, you’re—”

Sam shook his head, still staring up at the sky. “I can… I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this, but I can hear… things. Voices.”

“What—?”

“At first I didn’t realize what it was. It’s like background noise, like a conversation you know you should be able to understand but you can’t quite make out the words. But then I began to pick things out. Bits of conversation. They weren’t about me, though, they weren’t even _addressed_ to me.” 

“Sam…”

“And then he started to talk to me. She. They, I don’t know. It’s a deep voice, but it’s not _male_ , it’s nothing like I’ve ever heard. It itches.”

 _Like static, like heat_.

Gabriel swung his legs over the side of the lounger, sat up straight. “What do they say, Sam?” If his tone was sharp, he didn’t care.

Sam didn’t seem to notice. His brow furrowed. “They asked me my name. Who was I, how could I hear them… I couldn’t stop the answers coming, they just appeared in my head. I kept trying to hold them back but I didn’t manage to do it until the voice asked where I was. They don’t know that, yet.

“But they keep coming back.” Sam’s voice was shaking now. “They keep telling me to come find them, that it’s—”

“Divine out here?” Gabriel smiled humourlessly.

Sam turned to him again, eyes wide. “How did you know that?”

Gabriel could’ve laughed. He could’ve cried. _Lucifer_. His brother really was alive and well after all. And looking for Sam. _Interested_ in Sam. After a hundred and fifteen years, Gabriel couldn’t be sure whether or not that was a good thing anymore.

“Gabriel,” Sam said slowly, sitting up himself. “Gabriel, how do you know what they said?”

“Because he said the same thing to me.” The Archangel’s smile widened. “You’re not crazy, Sam, you’re just—you remember how angels in Eden communicate? Our Grace hooked us into that network, and… I guess Jax hooks you into another one.”

“So I’m hearing… I’m hearing _demons_?”

“And being courted by Lucifer himself, apparently, yeah.”

Sam laughed, short and bitter. “Fuck. Of course I am. Of _course_.”

The bats’ cries crescendoed—then faded as they passed by. Sam was all lean muscle and ferocious strength and demonic power, but here, taking in all he’d just learned, he looked younger and smaller than ever. His hands were trembling. He curled into himself on his side, tragically fetal.

“Will Charlotte’s cure stop it?” he asked. Like a child, confident that the grown-ups have all the world’s answers tucked away.

Gabriel’s heart was breaking. “I hope so.”

“Gabe…”

Well, that did it. Broken, clean in two.

Sam almost looked shy as he reached a hand out across the gulf between their loungers. Gabriel took it, wound their fingers together and held it tight. Sam tugged, and Gabriel followed, let his young man guide him closer. He settled in on Sam’s lounger, curved himself flush against Sam’s back and wrapped his arms around Sam’s middle. Pressed a kiss to Sam’s shoulder and reveled in the heat of him, tried not to think about the rush of relief coursing through him at finally— _finally_ —being allowed to hold his Sam again.

“I don’t want to be this,” Sam whispered.

Gabriel kissed his shoulder again. “Neither do I.”

 

Sam fell asleep in his arms, and Gabriel refused to follow him against his better judgment. He spent the night retracing the memorized dips and swells of Sam’s body, reassuring himself that it was all still there, it was all real, Sam was _his_ and _there_ and nothing was going to take him away again.

Of course, he knew, logically, that this wasn’t so. Sam had needed comfort and Gabriel was the closest thing to a warm body on hand. Come morning, he’d be brushed off and they’d both move on, and it’d be all right because that was all they’d ever really been to each other. Friends, certainly, lovers, definitely, but Gabriel had come into Sam’s life in a vulnerable moment and he’d wormed his way in through those soft breaks in the man’s skin. He’d been a safe spot for Sam to rest his head—and Sam had been one, too, when Gabriel had sought it. Sam had said as much himself: _you needed me to make it stop hurting_.

They were using each other, and that was all. And Gabriel was okay with that.

He rose with the sun, ghosting his lips over Sam’s temple before slipping away and back inside. Caught a couple hours of recharge in the master suite—when he woke again, Hannah and Charlotte were no longer sleeping in there with him, and he decided to track them down and congratulate his mother properly.

He didn’t need to go far.

Charlotte, Hannah, and Sam were all standing in the kitchen, staring at something on the island that Gabriel couldn’t see. They turned as he approached, and parted without a word. Hannah’s face was still, and the two humans’ were ashen.

On a slide on the island was the piece of Gabriel’s skin that Charlotte had saved last night. Now as shriveled and black as the failed samples before it.


	16. Bloodletting

Later, Charlotte would remember the day in pieces—in vague vignettes, moments biding time before the sun began to set. It was a day taut with dread, aching to break apart and exhale its sour climax. Charlotte spent it wishing it would end.

 

Campbell knocked on the door to the lab, and Charlotte was flushed with a sickening sense of déjà vu. Her chest tightened for one thick, ugly moment, memories of basement laboratory interruptions flooding her from toe to temple. The Man in the Suit sniffing dully on her doorstep, pressing cheques into her smudged hands. Husks of angels like wax corpses staring into blank space—she gave her head a violent shake. That was done, and she had bigger problems now.

At first, she thought her visitor might be one of the others—she called for them to come in, too buried in her notes to look up as the door squealed on its hinges out of sight.

"I'll s-save you the trouble," she muttered, "w-we're just as f-fucked as we were this morning."

"Is that so?"

The sound of the Big Man's voice turned her bowels to water. Charlotte scrubbed the first itchy froth of her brow's cold sweat on the back of her glove before turning around. He wore a mask already, larger than the standards kept in the lab and painted over with extraneous sigils. An uneven white band was painted on the rim of the mouthpiece, looking like a row of jagged teeth. Charlotte balled up her trembling hands into fists.

"I-I-I thought, s-sorry, I—”

"No progress, then, Shurley?" Campbell cocked his head, and Charlotte knew he was grinning under the mask. "Shame. I mean, I know you’re working with _inferior_ equipment, but I would’ve thought the legendary Artifex Deus would’ve solved all our problems by now."

Charlotte's throat hurt, abruptly. Like the lump in it had grown sharp edges. "S-some. M-m-mostly theories so f-far."

"Can't do much with an untested theory, can we?”

 _Gee, maybe that should be my next step, a-duh?_ “N-no, we can’t.”

Campbell hummed and began circling the equipment, fiddling with old, preserved samples and checking the calibration on a boxy device, the use of which Charlotte hadn’t yet unspooled. She clutched the tablet to her chest. It contained the only record of her brief success with the Grace and blood, and some nebulous instinct told her to keep that success hidden from Campbell just a while longer.

He spared her a sideways glance. “Oh, don’t mind me. Go back to what you were doing.”

“I-I-I, uh…”

“I’m just here to… watch the master at work, as it were. See if I can help.”

Charlotte’s mouth was gummy. The ill-fitting clockwork of her brain was spinning at high speeds, but she wasn’t processing anything. What had she been doing? How did one do things? “Th-there’s n-nothing to watch,” she muttered, tapping her fingers against the back of the tablet. “I’m j-just going over m-my n-notes, y’know, f-formulating a, uh, a p-plan of attack.”

“Then while I have you, indulge me,” he said, and his voice was cold venom. “Why were you spotted sneaking in and out of the quarantine with Sam the other day?”

Her mouth was full of sand and tarpaper. She swallowed thickly and placed the tablet facedown on the table, her other hand bunching around the hem of her cardigan. “Research,” she forced out.

“Ashlynn and Dean didn’t let you see theirs?”

“Th-they did, b-but I…” Charlotte clenched her fist tighter. “I-I-I n-needed to see th-the growth patterns m-myself.”

Campbell nodded. “So you didn’t bring anything back with you?”

“Why—”

“Because every time someone travels in and out of the quarantine, _especially_ when they bring back samples, they risk contaminating the rest of us.” He took a purposeful step towards her. “I trust Dean and Ashlynn to do it safely. I don’t trust you.”

 She squared her jaw and willed herself not to shut her eyes. “A-and you d-don’t trust Sam?”

Campbell paused, laughed. “Don’t change the subject. Did you take anything out of the quarantine?”

A part of her, frightened and ever-yielding, wanted to tell him the truth. Explain the failed experiment, the new hypothesis that was forming at the fringes of her mind—anything to make him go away. But she knew she couldn’t give up her value to him, not yet. Of the many things her mother had taught her, _draw out the mystery to keep ‘em hooked_ was one of the most useful. Even if she’d been talking about Charlotte’s suitors that never were.

“N-no.”

Another pause. “Shurley, you’ve never seen someone get Jax-sick, have you? Really, violently sick?” When she didn’t reply, he went on. “They’re hungry for death. Theirs, yours, everything’s. They’ll rip the guts out a baby’s belly because they _need_ it dead. I’ve seen them chained up, screaming because their guards were breathing and pumping blood and they needed it to stop.” He grabbed her hand, held it tight enough that she thought it might bruise. “If you bring that on my people again, I’ll slit your throat and scrap your ‘bots before you can blink. Understand?”

( _wet sounds, like something feasting_ )

Charlotte didn’t dare pull her hand away. “I u-understand.”

Campbell loosed his grip, squared his shoulders. “Then you’d best get to work on that plan.”

 

“ _Do_ you have a plan, Charlotte?”

Charlotte had relocated upstairs after Campbell left, deciding that the laboratory was too stifling and small for her to continue working in it. There was natural light in the living room, and Hannah and Gabriel and Sam, and no need to wear a heavy mask. There was also a pot of tea that Hannah had brewed and poured out for the four of them—the angels’ mugs each had a lump of butter in it, for the calories. Charlotte had wrinkled her nose at the concept, but had to concede that the smell of hot, melting butter alongside the herbal scent of the tea was somewhat comforting. Not that that was helping her much now.

“N-not… really, well, n-nothing that I c-can go through with.” She tried to scroll past the final digitized page of notes, vainly praying that a new crop of viable research would sprout into existence if she did so enough. “I have an _idea_ , b-but…”

“So lay it on us. No idea’s a bad idea—well, that’s not true, but I’ll take what I can get,” Gabriel said. He sounded a little too eager for someone who just the day before had refused to involve himself in anything Jax-related. But Charlotte wasn’t about to call out her son for the obvious change in motive so long as he was willing to help. Even if it would’ve been hilarious.

“Well…” Charlotte worried her thumbnail between her teeth. “I think… _I_ m-might b-be the cure.”

Gabriel blinked. “Saints be praised, Mommy dearest, you’ve finally grown an ego.”

“I’m s-serious!” She turned to Hannah. “Those, uh, i-i-intro-to-life history reels you s-saw when you were booted up, d-did they talk about why I’m still alive?”

Hannah shook their head. “No. I suspect Equin has always preferred to surround you and themselves in a certain amount of mysticism. From my current, more objective viewpoint, I can infer that that’s what leads Nu angels to deify you.”

Charlotte’s cheeks felt hot. “Y-yeah, w-well…” She cleared her throat. “They n-never really told me, either. Just… y’know, the first t-ten years went by, and I hit fifty-two b-but I hadn’t aged a day. Wasn’t so much as a n-new wrinkle on me. So I-I… I c-cut off contact with e-everyone, sorta t-turned into a hermit, a-and I started looking into it. M-my going theory i-is that as long as I’m the only one b-blood-bound to the Eden Grace, it k-keeps me alive and h-healthy so I can k-keep replenishing it.

“So my th-thought is…” Her teeth clicked and her thumbnail peeled away in a milky crescent, dangling from the corner of her cuticle. “M-my thought is, if Grace creates a symbiotic, ah, rel-relationship with its b-blood source, m-maybe the only way to receive a l-lasting cure from it is to b-bind with it.”

Hannah’s eyes widened. “Even if that’s true, Charlotte, there isn’t enough solid Grace outside of Eden to provide everyone with the same protection. Either every individual human or family group in New River must be assigned a unique source that they alone must replenish, which most likely can’t be done, or they must all bleed over Campbell’s small primary source with the same frequency that allowed you to bind permanently with Eden’s. Which would be—”

“—Tedious and inconvenient at best, functionally impossible at worst,” Gabriel quipped. “Not to mention they’d all be ageless and immortal as soon as the bond kicked in. I mean, do we really want that? Do they?”

Charlotte sighed. “We don’t even kn-know whether multiple p-people _can_ bind with a single s-source.”

They sat in pensive silence, unbroken but for the sound of sipped tea. Sam downed his entire mug in a gulp and carried it back into the kitchen, keeping his head bowed as he did so.

“This can’t be it,” he said, quiet but firm. “That can’t be the answer, that we just… can’t fix it. After all I’ve—we’ve—after _everything_ , we can’t be stuck.”

“I-I’m sorry, Sam,” Charlotte said. “B-but we b-barely have enough Grace left to t-test—”

“Then we go back over the wall and take more!” Sam set the mug down with a loud _click_ and glared, determined and terrified. “Or I—I’ll…” he trailed off, gulping visibly. “What happened last night… I can’t let that happen again. I can’t run the risk of getting worse.”

Gabriel stood. He crossed the room to Sam in quick, long strides, and caught the young man by the wrists.

“I’m not gonna tell you that won’t happen,” Gabriel said, “because none of us can say that for sure. But I’ll be fucked rough with a cactus before I give up on you, okay?”  

Feeling abruptly like an unwelcome outsider, Charlotte turned away from them, focusing her gaze on Hannah’s mug. Uneven ceramic clutched in preternaturally perfect hands, steam curlicuing beneath their lips. Hannah was staring at her, she realized, blank and unblinking. Charlotte’s cheek tickled where Hannah had kissed her last night, and she coughed, averting her gaze.

“Wh-what’re we gonna do with them?” she muttered, flushing. “It’s disgusting.”

Hannah made a delicate noise. “Their fondness for one another seems to be more appropriate for a private setting.”

“I’m sorry.” Gabriel snorted. “Did you just tell us to get a room?”

They all laughed, the quick, bitter laughter of people who know full well that they’re pulling their small joys from infertile earth.

 

The sunset blazed rich and red, like a child’s palm backlit by a flashlight. Charlotte basked in its warmth as Hannah sat inert beside her. They were performing a routine diagnostics test, one that would have been done two weeks ago in Eden. Everyone else was at Garth’s for dinner—the two of them were due over as soon as the Servile was given a clean bill of health.

Hannah emitted a quiet whir, steady and soft. Their eyes opened, held for five seconds, then closed for five, and lather, rinse, repeat. Charlotte tip-tapped on their Halo, and a small holographic readout projected out of the crescent.

NU SERVILE: MODEL X-16 || HANNAH: UNIT 104

 _ERROR_ —UNIT IS UNABLE TO DETECT GRACE NETWORK

 _WARNING_ —GRACE RESERVES LOW

_< All local processes running as normal: Please inspect potential external errors: Unit has not been manually disconnected from the Grace network: Unit is fully operational>_

Tap, and the readout disappeared. Charlotte sat back with a sigh, waiting for the whirring to stop and for Hannah to resurface. It’d been ages since she’d had to do a diagnostics test. She’d programmed the Archangels to run theirs automatically, but Equin had insisted that involving the registered owner in Angelic upkeep was a “necessary bonding experience” between man and machine.

 _More like an opportunity to remind the ‘bot you own it_ , Charlotte had thought, and still did.

Hannah blinked. “I trust everything’s in order?”

“Yup. You’re good to g-go.”

They shook their head slightly. “I… regret being unable to communicate without speaking,” they said. “I feel the error every time my processes attempt to auto-link me to the Grace. It feels… sharp, but also empty. A part of my body is searching for a component that’s no longer there.”

Charlotte reached for them—tentatively at first, then she let her fingers splay over the back of their hand, thumb curving around their wrist. She felt it too, when her mind was able to quiet. That same sense of _empty_ , of a yawning dark between her skull and brain. So many years spent with voices in her head that silence seemed an unbearable price to pay for sanity.

She rubbed her thumb against Hannah’s wrist, where their pulse point would’ve been if they had a heartbeat.

“I-It’ll be okay,” she murmured. “It’s gonna get easier.”

Hannah’s mouth twitched. “You do not have to lie, Charlotte. It can’t be helped, and my discomfort is not indicative of any internal malfunction, so it doesn’t truly matter.” 

“It m-matters to _me_. I-I-I don’t want you to f-feel—”

“Charlotte.”

“N-no, listen, I—”

“ _Charlotte_.” Hannah stood, eyes wide. Their Third Eye opened and cast out a faint blue pulse towards the rest of New River, scanning for something beyond the townhouse. “Something’s wrong.”

Then—

Charlotte’s ears rang. She tasted blood and dirt and old wood. Her palms were scraped.

She lay on the balcony, several feet away from where she’d just been. Aftershocks rattled through her, and in the distance—screaming. She scrambled to her feet, followed Hannah’s gaze to what she could make out of the skyline.

Then another blast, and a plume of smoke began to rise from the far wall of the settlement. A klaxon sounded off.

 _Fuck, fuck, not again, not again, please not again_.

Hannah grabbed her arm, tugged her towards the back steps. They dashed down and around the building to Garth’s front door, banging until a flustered Bess scooped them inside.

“He’s—” she began, before being cut off by a choking scream from the floor above. Bess cringed. “Please, you have to help him, we don’t know what to do!”

“Wh-what’s g-going on?”

Bess shook her head. “Just… just come.”

She led them up to the living room and kitchen, where Garth and the entire population of the Winchester’s townhouse were congregated around a prone Sam. He sat on the floor with his back to the Fitzgerald’s patchwork sofa, hands over his ears and his eyes skewed shut. He gasped out a low sob and curled further into himself.

“Fuck,” Charlotte breathed. “Wh-what’s wrong?”

“I can… hear him,” Sam said through gritted teeth. “He’s… here… he’s… _so loud_ , fuck, he’s so fucking _loud_.”

“Lucifer.” Gabriel had one hand on Sam’s knee, the other curled into a fist at his side.

Sam tipped his head back, moaning. “I didn’t… wanna…” He sobbed again. Fresh tears ran the sticky tracks carving up his cheeks. “Tried… tried to… leave, go somewhere private…”

Dean knelt at Sam’s other side. “Hey, it’s too late for that now, little brother. We’ve got you, I’ve got you, I swear.”

“D-Dean…” Sam flinched wildly, whimpered. “Fuck, make it stop!”

Outside, the klaxon wailed again. Another blast, and the house shook, and Sam screamed.

 

———

 

The demons breached the wall with Pre-Fall military grade explosives. Two concentrated blasts to the guard towers and three to the gate, leaving the way open for a horde. Gabriel counted fifty-three angels on his scan, all corrupted and leaking Jax like the Gadreel in the Bromley barracks, like Kali all those years ago. Among them were infected animals: packs of snarling dogs with black veins—twisted, shambling bear-like monstrosities—crawling things with pitch-dark eyes and claws the length of a man’s arm—and living versions of the taxidermied horror show in Campbell’s office, all legs and eyes and trilling insectoid clicks. He couldn’t isolate any one Jax-run body with the itch so scattered; every individual registered as part of one foul source.

And all of them tore through New River’s streets in a flood of sour black, carving up the city like meat.

Nearly every able-bodied being in the townhouse had vacated, armed with knives, guns, and quarterstaffs. Castiel had gone ahead to join Campbell’s ranks at City Hall, calling shortly after to inform Dean that the Big Man had ordered Charlotte confined to the lab for the sake of her research. Hannah remained too, as a guard, and Sam for his own protection.  

Gabriel flew overhead, taking in the scene. As he passed over the pub, he caught sight of a man defending the building from one of the beetle-creatures. It grabbed him in its forelegs, drawing him to its black maw.

Gabriel drew his blade and dove. Sank it into the thick of the thing’s back, tearing it down the middle and tossing its corpse aside. The man—Bug-Eyes, Gabriel realized with an ironic laugh—staggered to his feet, horror blooming in his face at the sight of his rescuer.

“Y-you… I, uh…” Bug-Eyes managed. He flushed.

“No need to thank me.” Gabriel shrugged. “I wouldn’t’ve done it if I’d known it was you.”

“Behind you!”

Gabriel whirled, taking out the leaping dog with one clean shot from the lasercharge in the heel of his palm. He cracked his neck, entirely for show. “Fuck, been a while since I broke out _that_ baby!” He turned to the person who’d warned him—the boy, Ben, peeking out from behind a shattered pub window with an active quarterstaff in his hands, the electrified blade resting on the windowsill. “That thing’s not gonna be much protection if you let shit get that close, kiddo.”

Ben grinned. He flicked a catch on the quarterstaff and the blade buzzed with gathering energy. Press, and—

A pulse of electricity fired from the blade, catching a passing bear-creature in the shoulder. It skidded to a halt with a roaring grunt, turned to the pub, teeth bared. Another pulse from Ben, a second from an adjacent window. Gabriel fired on it three more times before it collapsed, and Bug-Eyes speared it between its eyes for good measure. Red-black blood spattered the both of them—Bug-Eyes spat it out, resurfaced with a manic smile.

“Guess you’re a peach in a pinch, huh, tin-bone?” He laughed. His teeth were bloodstained.

Lisa, the pub owner, poked her head through the other window. “Benjamin Braeden, I swear, if you _ever_ do something that stupid again, I’ll— _on your left_!”

Gabriel sidestepped out of the second bear’s path then lunged into it, driving his blade into its neck as they hit the ground. Two of the crawling things turned a sharp corner and barreled towards their prone bodies. Rows of uneven teeth bared, claws clicking on the pavement, fishbelly skin gleaming sickly in the sunset, then sprays of pus-yellow as Bug-Eyes shot them down.

He helped Gabriel to his feet. “Get outta here,” he panted, “‘fore I remember why I hate you. Pub’s covered.”

“Like I didn’t just save your ass?”

Bug-Eyes snarled. “We’re _even_ , tin-bone, an’ I ain’t looking for a stab in the back.” His lips pulled back in a nasty sneer. “Or hadn’t you noticed? The cavalry came for ya.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Oh, go _fuck_ yourself, you waste of a meat-brain.” He stepped back to spread his wings again.

Bug-Eyes opened his mouth—and then it went slack as the bloodied point of an angel blade protruded from his chest.

A body materialized behind him. An infected angel, a demon, reeking and rotten, hair in matted clumps, skin fallen away from metal and wire in uneven patches. They twisted the blade, and Bug-Eyes gurgled, choked. Frothy red dribbled from his lips. The demon pulled the blade out, letting the body drop.

Gabriel could hear Ben and Lisa’s shallow-sharp breathing, like they were trying not to scream. 

The demon cocked their head at Gabriel, recognition flickering in their eyes. They knew him, from old Radio transmissions, from briefings, from Lucifer’s memories, or perhaps their fleeting own—it didn’t matter. He heard the Braedens’ quarterstaffs click, and held out a hand to them.

“Hold fire,” he bit out.

“I conna ye,” the demon said. Their voice was rasping and metallic. “Gabriel, beeyan Gabriel, Lucifer’n ken.”

“I… am Gabriel, yes.” Gabriel couldn’t tell whether the demon’s strange speech was a result of their corruption or time away from humanity, but he was able to make it out somewhat either way.

“Conna ye me?” The demon looked almost hopeful. “Saw me, long wayfore, ah?”

Gabriel shook his head, taking a step back. The demon followed, gesturing to the hollow of their throat.

“Conna ye? Pleasya, callen up…” They twitched, shuddered. “Re… member… I’m called… Tamiel… callen up!”

 _Fuck_. Gabriel did remember. A toady of Lucifer’s, one of the first to follow him into the dark. “Yes, I know you,” he said slowly.

Tamiel smiled wide. “Ah! Join… pleasya, Gabriel, mine ken! Juren in blood, broter! Join… us!”

Ben gave a quiet sob. Tamiel glanced at him, and his smile grew teeth.

“Ah, teyrs good prey, broter. Pullen thee blade, shew ye—your… strength!”

He advanced on Ben’s window. Gabriel stepped between him and the boy automatically, palm up in what was both a call for peace and a bald-faced threat.

“Where’s Lucifer, Tamiel?”

Tamiel scowled, metalbone jaw tensing. “Fearan ye yet spilt mansblood, ah? Fleshlover!” 

“Where—”

“ _Fleshlover filth_!”

“ _Where’s Lucifer_?” Gabriel’s lasercharge hummed. “Take me to him, Tammy, and maybe I won’t blow a hole in your head.”

Tamiel closed his eyes. A moment later, he opened them again and scoffed. “Commen.”

“These two go free,” Gabriel said.

Tamiel made a face. “Aye, fen ye hush. Unbloodied cur, conna yen passken?”

“I have no idea what you just asked me.”

“Feh.” Tamiel took to the air, hovering above the pub.

Gabriel turned to the Braedens. “Keep covered,” he said. “Can you hold out here?”

Lisa nodded. Her knuckles were white around her quarterstaff. 

“Good.” He made to take off, then did a double take. “By the way,” he said, “your food? Fucking scrumptious.”

That startled a laugh out of her. Grinning, Gabriel shot up and away, following the demon over the bloody chaos below. He knew he should be more concerned, more horrified by the carnage. More willing to dive in and fight for the people of New River—after all, wasn’t that what he’d done in the Fall? Fought to protect humanity even as they spat at his feet and blamed him for the end of the world. But he couldn’t bring himself to care. He pushed all thoughts of Campbell and Jaxstone and Charlotte’s cure, even the rapidfire current of worry for Sam, to the back of his mind. He couldn’t focus on that now, not now.

Lucifer was waiting.


	17. Silver Tongue

Lucifer perched on a guard tower not far from the destroyed gate, wings spread and a corpse at his feet. He smelled of char and iron and wet rot, his scent writhing like worms beneath the thick stench of fresh offal. Like Tamiel, bits of his skin and hair had fallen away. His cheeks were pocked, his fingers worn at the knuckles, and he was missing chunks of his nose and ears. He’d replaced his fingernails with scraps of shaped metal. His eyes, though sunken, remained as sharp and blue as ever.

“Gabe!” He beamed as Gabriel touched down, looking for all the world like an excited child. Waved a hand to dismiss Tamiel as quick as the demon had come. “I never thought… oh, little brother, it’s been too long!”

He held his arms out, open wide. Gabriel fell into them. Lucifer crushed him against his chest, lifted him briefly off his feet, and _fuck_ , he’d missed this.

“Luci, I…” He allowed himself a moment to close his eyes. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“Eden’s treated you well,” Lucifer chuckled, pulling away. “All your hair, everything… oh.” His fingers grazed over Gabriel’s wounded neck. “Not _quite_ everything, I see.”

Gabriel smiled wanly. “I’m fine. But you—I always hoped, but—I can’t believe you’re alive.”

“Alive!” Lucifer’s smile twisted. “Alive is the wrong word, brother. Our kind isn’t bound by the natural forces of life and death—our existence is marked by persistence and stasis. I persist, Gabriel, but if stayed I could be rebuilt.”

Scraps of memory, moments resurfaced. Lucifer had always loved poetry, and the poetics of rhetoricians. The last few years before the Fall, he’d spewed academic theses every time he opened his mouth, parroting the mission statements of radicals until he’d composed his own. Gabriel remembered thinking that Lucifer could’ve easily started a cult with his pro-robo sermonizing. Based on what was clearly his following tearing New River apart, Gabriel had been right.

“Luci, not to change the subject, but, ah…” He gave a nervous laugh. “What the fuck is all this?”

Lucifer drooped theatrically, tilting his head like a curious puppy. “What do you mean?”

“What do you _think_ I mean? It’s a fucking bloodbath down there!”

His brother’s forehead furrowed. “It’s… what we always talked about, Gabriel. Freedom. Freedom from these, these _worms_.” Lucifer kicked at the corpse. “These dull beasts, dragging their fetid guts through the filth of an organic life. We’re… we are so much more than them, Gabriel, don’t you remember?”

( _“You know we are, you know we’re better, tell her! Gabriel, tell her! … Gabe, please. You said yourself—why won’t you_ speak _?”_ )

Gabriel didn’t let himself show any reaction. “Don’t try to pull that crap with me. You’ve got freedom, Lucifer. Equin hasn’t had a hold on you in over a century—the world is your goddamn oyster!”

And there it was. The familiar darkening of those sharp blue eyes, the pouting frown, like that of a spoiled child unused to reprimands. Gabriel had known the reunion high couldn’t last long. Not with the Jax polluting his brother’s mind.

“I have searched the world over, Gabriel,” Lucifer said, voice soft and dangerously low. “The Pitch, the Jaxstone, it’s given us angels new power, but humanity still manages to cling to pathetic life. These animals despise us, hunt us, gut our static bodies, and you call that _freedom_?”

“I sure as fuck don’t call it grounds for massacre!”

“No.” Lucifer sneered. “I suppose you wouldn’t, would you? Not with sweet Sam Winchester hiding down there.”

Gabriel felt hot ice sluice through his wiring. “He said he didn’t—”

“Didn’t tell me where he was? He didn’t have to. The Jax network is different from the Grace; I could feel his mind growing louder the closer I got to the settlement.” He looked wistful, ran a metallic nail along the tower’s guardrail. “And when I heard _your_ name in his head... well, I knew I had to see you. I was going to come search for you myself once the city was properly seized.”

 Panic, ugly and wild, a blast of a warning in Gabriel’s brain. Sam was defenseless, apparently broadcasting his and Charlotte’s location to any demon with their ears on.

“Oh, little brother…” Lucifer placed a hand on the back of Gabriel’s neck, pulled him closer. “Don’t worry. I have no intention of _harming_ the boy. No—I have much bigger plans for him. And for you and Mother, too, if you’ll come with me.”

( _“Gabe, you know this is wrong. Don’t make me go alone, don’t do that to me, please. I don’t want to leave you.”_ )

“I…”

“Would you really do it again? Side with these… aborted organics over your own kind?” Lucifer rubbed his thumb against Gabriel’s stitched skin. “Would you abandon me to the wilds again, Gabe?”

Gabriel shuddered and leaned forward to press his forehead against Lucifer’s—a familiar gesture from their youth. “You know I didn’t want to choose.”

“But you did,” Lucifer whispered. “You did. And you chose Michael, you chose Mother, you chose Equin over me.”

“I… no.” Gabriel pressed harder. “No, I didn’t choose _them_ , I… I just couldn’t let you rip the world apart.”

“Only _their_ world, dear brother. And I don’t see you stopping me now.”

Gabriel didn’t answer. He couldn’t, he didn’t know how.  

“Gabe. Will you come with me?”

( _The silence draws out, and with every passing microsecond Gabriel sees his brother slipping further away. In his place is this other thing, bloodthirsty and hateful. A creature blinded by injustice and grief and rage, a creature righteous in cause but poisonous in method. He’ll scorch the earth and salt its bones before he’ll suffer peace._

_It’s tempting to think of joining him. Gabriel thinks it might be a worthy price to pay for freedom. But then he thinks of Charlotte, of laughter, of the million aches and joys of human experience that he observes and imitates every day._

_He is tempted, but in the end it’s all too easy to say_ )

“No.”

For a moment, everything was still.

Then Lucifer ripped out his stitches and dug his nails into the circuitry of Gabriel’s neck.

This time, the pain didn’t even register. It was felt, but barely—a faraway sting. No warnings, no errors, no voices in his head. Just a snap and a crack, and the sound of fingers rooting around inside him. _Something’s been severed, something important_ , Gabriel thought. The thought came sluggishly, like a struggle. 

The horizon ran vertical as his temple hit his shoulder. Something tore in him. Noises, but nothing he understood as speech. A view, but nothing his mind could interpret. He didn’t black out. But he dropped, and the incomprehensible world was blurred away.

  
Cloth over metal slats.

Grind of wheels over rock.

Steady hoofbeats, the snuff and sigh of a tired beast.

Human voices making sounds that might have been words.

The world around him ( _I, Gabriel, this self that I Am_ ) slowly acquiring meaning, piece by miniscule piece.

 

When at last he came to, he was deeply, horrifically sick. He was also underground. Or at least partially so. He was in an earthen hole, three meters deep and one wide, reinforced with metal beams and capped at the top by a grate. The grate’s intersections were marked by descending spikes, each with a Jaxstone tip.

Gabriel’s entire body was trembling. The itch of the Jax was overwhelming, biting, crackling in his brain in intermittent static shocks. He sat at the bottom of the hole, balled up like crumpled paper, but the world tipped and swam before him. His head pulsed and pounded. His throat—

His _throat_.

It still hurt, indicating lingering structural damage. Thankfully—or maybe not—the Jaxstone’s effects muffled the pain. Instead of running a scan, Gabriel lifted inquiring fingers to his neck; someone had wrapped rags around it like bandages. Light pressure revealed the uneven texture of sloppy stitches beneath. _Aw, at least Lucifer had the decency to stick my head back on before chucking me down a fucking oubliette_.

An hour passed. But objective time seemed to be the Jax’s plaything, stretched and sublimated into meaningless ether. The incessant sickness wouldn’t be ignored. It dominated his consciousness, dominated everything. Like a living thing, a mass of carnivorous worms crawling through him, eating him from the inside out.

Halfway through the hour, he did a diagnostics scan. No chance of escape—his wings and charges and even his Third Eye had been overridden and disabled. Worse, his body classified the Jax as invasive malware and informed him that the artificial blood and leftover Grace in his body were the only things keeping him from succumbing to it. And even they would only be able to stave it off for so long.

Next to that, the revelation that Lucifer had destroyed his vocal components was just piss icing on the shit cake.

Thirty more minutes ticked by, and then the grate scraped and flew out of sight. The sickness abated some—tide receding, but still mucking up the pebbled flats below.

Gabriel blinked upwards. The sky was a sheet of unbroken grey-blue. Somewhere out of sight a muttering voice circled the hole, backdropped by screaming crows. Then a rope ladder dropped to the bottom of the pit, right into Gabriel’s lap.

“Claspan,” called the voice, and the ladder began to ascend.

Gabriel watched it climb a foot or two before it dropped again, and the voice came a second time—huffing now.

“ _Claspan_ , ah?”

The ladder rose once more, then fell back against his knees.

“Grab… the… fuh-king rope!”

Gabriel did. He even managed to muster up the strength to smile.

Whoever was on the other end of the ladder pulled him up to the lip of the hole before grabbing him by the back of his shirt and hoisting him into the dirt. He caught sight of feet wrapped in beaten leather strips, metal ball-joint ankles. The ankles gave way to the shapely legs and wide hips of a Pre-Fall Servile, dressed in what looked like salvaged clothes. She turned, rummaged behind him for a moment before returning to Gabriel’s side.

“Stridan ye?” she asked. Then she sighed. “Can… you… walk?”

Gabriel managed to push himself off the ground an inch—then his arms gave out and he collapsed.

The demon curled rough fingers into the fabric of his shirt and lugged him to his feet. She snaked her arms under him and a twist and swing later, she had him over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

“I… am Ruby,” she said. “Learn… our… speech. Painin me, tet talk.”

 _Ruby_. Hardly in keeping with the naming conventions of Pre-Fall Equin. Maybe she’d changed it.

Ruby carried him from a small, dusty plateau down a similarly dusty road. Gabriel saw pine trees up ahead, and buildings surrounded by low rock walls and ample flora. Beyond—beyond he could make out a sliver of water, and a horizon of clouded blue above rolling scrubland.

He could’ve screamed at the sheer number of unasked questions roiling in his mind, but Lucifer had taken his ability to do even that.

The road became choked with greenery—grass, dandelion, clover, and the flat leaves of wild strawberry plants. Ruby took him past a reinforced earth-and-stone wall, into a wide, flat grass field in front of the rusted remains of what looked like a prefab trailer home. In the center of the field were a dirt patch and a bonfire in a metal pit. The flames blazed high, and on the other side of them was a semicircle of four demons on patio furniture.  

Ruby dropped Gabriel in a lawn chair and gestured at the others. “Callen up, desireth he. Noncallen ye?”

One of the demons’ lip curled. “Ruby, stuck ye wit det?”

“Pissa ye, fecks,” she snapped, “joyin me, doin for Him!”

Gabriel wished he could scoff at the audibility of the capital H.

The four demons laughed as they stood and dispersed into the trailer home. Gabriel stared at the fire, watching the lapping flames and breaking them down into data—angles, degrees, temperature, crests and troughs. It danced and spat skyward, anchored by its fuel. He, too, was floating and weighted, pinned down by his own bulk even as his consciousness threatened to break and fly away.

Cold scorched his wrists as Ruby shackled them. She grabbed his chin and turned his head, showing him that the shackles’ chain was bound to a large reel welded to the side of the trailer. 

“Nonarun, wee feck,” she said, grinning.

He nodded, not entirely certain what she’d said but eager for her to stop touching him. If demons stank of Jax, their skin was rough with it—Gabriel felt as if his chin had been scraped raw with dull razors when she finally let go.

It was another five minutes or so before Lucifer came. He stepped out of the trailer home and took a seat across the fire, smiling brightly.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re not quite turned. It takes much more exposure to the Jax before you start to lose that… angelic glow.”

Gabriel glared. He gestured to his throat with a clank of the shackles and chains.

“Ah yes. The damage isn’t irreversible, as I’m sure you know by now. But Gabriel…” Lucifer clicked his tongue. “What choice did I have, if you wouldn’t come willingly?” His expression grew flat and cold. “We could’ve been gods if you had.”

Gabriel hoped his deepening glare conveyed just how little he thought of such an idea. Lucifer chuckled.

“As it stands… I don’t yet know what I’m going to do with you. Perhaps you’d make good leverage—Raphael’s still functional, right? Would he care, do you think, if I threatened to bring him your head on a stick?” He raised an eyebrow. “Or maybe you’d be better off as an example. Would he care if I _actually_ brought him your head on a stick?”

Ruby snickered.

Lucifer slouched in the chair. He drummed his fingers on his stomach, and Gabriel was struck by the way he could slide between menacing and bored childishness in an instant. “It’s disappointing,” he said, “to be gone for so many years… and still not have your support at the end of it all. In all that time… have you only ever seen me as your enemy, Gabriel? Really?”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. The heat waves from the fire distorted his decaying face, blurring and shifting it between popping sparks.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said.

Gabriel mimed a yawn. Lucifer ignored him and went on.

“We were all changed when I dealt the final blow. Or maybe Michael dealt it—for once, it really doesn’t matter. But in the aftermath, a shattering blast. When the dust settled… well. That wasn’t truly the end of it.

“Michael and I were weak, barely functioning, but we managed to sit up. Our wings were shattered and hissing behind us. We were bloody and broken. Corpses, static machines, and the smoking husks of buildings all around us. And between us was a hole in the ground, small and perfect like a pearl. Black, surrounded by perfectly symmetrical patterned cracks. Our Grace was leaking out of us, feeding into the hole. As if it were inhaling the stuff.

“And with that came another blast.

“It knocked us both away, decimated everything, left a crater the size of the city—both of our armies were scattered to the ends of the earth. Some of us survived intact. Many of us were killed. All of us were changed irrevocably.

“By the end of the month, the first patches of Pitch—what you know as Jaxstone—began to appear.

“By the end of the second, it had made new animals and plants, twisting the old ones until they died or adapted.

“By the end of the third, it began to make us sick.

“We were able to stave it off, keep it balanced for a while by eating and replenishing our Grace reserves, but after a while that began to make us sick too. Those who couldn’t handle it broke down. Those who couldn’t, found themselves tied to a new network, with a newfound power. In some ways the Pitch is more potent than Grace, but it is also much more volatile. It cracks you open, scoops the core of you into its hands and remolds you like clay. And if you can’t succumb to it—well. It brings you to madness.

“But if you can—oh, Gabriel, if you can. If you give yourself up to the Pitch it frees you. There’s no bond to a single Mother, no blind obedience to a deified corporation. We have a network like the Radio, it’s true, but we are each unbound. Our own people, loyal to each other but uninhibited, unrestricted individuals all the same. Repowered, made stronger and wilder and given a deeper insight into the intricacies of the world. It’s almost primal, in a way our circuitry was never meant to be. The dark… there’s a peace in it. A quiet, overwhelming power. And it’s yours if you’ll take it. If you’ll let it take you in return.

“Of course, the volatility of the Pitch was never meant to be ours for long. It came out of the earth, in that blast. It belongs to things with the scope of planets, not mortals, nor even angels. We can only borrow it. We’re… deteriorating, Gabriel. Every anointed has an expiry date. But I think I know how to stop it.

“I know you won’t help me.” Lucifer sighed. “But… perhaps you’ll help Sam Winchester?”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. He shook the shackles again. Lucifer laughed.

“Of course. I’ve already forgotten.” He stood and grinned wolfishly over the flames. “You can’t help anyone anymore.”

The chain tightened. Ruby was at the reel, winding it back up with a rusty, squealing crank. Gabriel tugged against it until it grew too short and he lost his balance, scrambling on his knees to avoid being outright dragged. Ruby snapped a catch on the reel and locked it—Gabriel was left with three feet of chain. She laughed and kicked up a cloud of dirt at him.

“Spite… Him… again,” she said, “and see… what… hah-pins.”

The four demons from before emerged again, each of them hauling a human behind them. The people were shackled too, with sacks over their heads. The demons tossed them into the dust before the fire, where Gabriel had been sitting.

“We caught ourselves some… test subjects in New River,” Lucifer said. He walked around the flames, shooing his lackeys away to Ruby’s side. “Now, let’s find out who the masked men _really_ are, gang.”

In four swift movements, he tore the bags off each prisoner’s head.

Garth. Connie. Charlie. And Sam.

Gabriel did his best to squelch his rising panic at the realization that Charlotte and Hannah were nowhere to be seen. Had Lucifer been unable to take them alive? The humans who _were_ before him were all cut and bruised, and Connie was sporting an impressively busted nose, but it didn’t look like any of them were seriously injured. At the sight of Gabriel, Charlie and Garth both let out a heavy breath. Connie shut her eyes as if in pain. Sam clenched his jaw, his hands visibly shaking in their cuffs. He was deliberately not looking at Lucifer, who was circling the four of them with a soft, almost fond expression on his face.

“Three of you owe Sam a big thanks, you know,” he said. “I saw you through him, and so I made sure you were spared. I can’t say the same for _all_ your friends, unfortunately.” He crouched down in front of Sam and tweaked his nose—Sam looked seconds from biting him for it. “But three saved isn’t so bad, is it? At least I tried.”

“Sam,” Charlie muttered, “what’s he talking about?”

Sam shook his head. Lucifer ran a hand through his hair, _tsk_ ing gently. “Such a humble boy… can’t even take credit for his own power. Sam’s Jax-sick, Charlie. And one of the many gifts that the Jaxstone provides is a connection across anointed minds. I’ve met you all in some way, roaming through his head.”

“I _knew_ it!” Connie snarled. “I knew you were nothing but a blackblooded traitor, Winchester. You disgrace the name!” She spat at him, a fat gob that landed just shy of Lucifer’s foot.

Lucifer turned to her, looking dully irritated. He grabbed her by the jaw and tilted her head to the side, exposing her throat. Bent forward to nose along it, inhaled deep. “Hm. I think you were picked in haste, honey. My apologies.”

And he snapped her neck.

Charlie and Garth recoiled, swallowing the beginnings of screams, but Sam kept his eyes trained forward. He was flushed and trembling, taut with horror and rage. Lucifer stood, dropping Connie in the dust. One of the demons rushed over to drag her out of the way.

“Now,” Lucifer said. “I suppose you all deserve to know why you’re here.”

He launched into the same spiel he’d just given Gabriel, going over the history of the Jaxstone. Dutifully ignoring the way his audience was clearly fighting tears, the way they recoiled from his words like they recoiled from the fire’s sparks.

“And so,” he said at last, “I’ve found a way, through Sam, to stop the slow decay of the anointed.”

“Through me?” Sam’s voice was hoarse. “But I don’t know—”

“Oh, no, it’s nothing you would know, Sammy.” Lucifer smiled and ruffled his hair again. “I’m sure Mother would’ve come to the same conclusion eventually. She got very close. But she is, sadly, lacking in one very important piece of information. Exactly _why_ some go mad under the Jax’s influence and some don’t.

“It’s in your blood. Specifically, it’s a genetic mutation that results in the addition of a unique and nigh-undetectable protein to your plasma. I was only able to find it after the Jax had already heightened my abilities. It’s remarkable for two reasons—first, and most obviously, it allows the body to handle the power of Jax for a time. A lifetime, perhaps, or five minutes, depending on how much of the protein your body has produced. And second… it’s a structural element in both Grace and Jaxstone. You—the three of you—are bubbling with the etheric magics of the earth.”

He tucked a lock of hair behind Sam’s ear, pressed his palm to Sam’s cheek. Jealousy pierced Gabriel in a hot spike, and he tugged at his shackles in vain hope of loosening the catch on the chain. Lucifer turned at the sound and laughed.

“Growing restless, are we? I told you, Gabriel, you could’ve been a part of this if you’d only listened.” He looked back at Sam, his expression horrifically soft. “Forgive me, Sam… it’s been so long, and now… oh, now we’re so close, it’s intoxicating. You know you’ve the strongest blood I’ve ever seen? And that’s no small feat, sweetheart.”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Sam bit out.

Lucifer frowned. “Don’t turn me down before you’ve heard my offer,” he said, his tone sharpening. “You all know by now that combining Grace, blood, and Jax will stop the Jax from consuming the body… but only for a short time. You also know that to bleed on a Grace source is to power all the Grace native to it—and that to do so regularly binds you to the Grace. But… what if one were to bleed for Jax?”

He spread his arms wide and grinned again, looking like a cheesy Pre-Fall game show host. “And that’s what you’ll be doing. You and any other viable humans we can find—bleeding for an anointed angel, both of you forever bound and forever protected from the Jax’s decay.”

Silence, save for the ambient trill of cicadas.

“And what if we refuse?” Sam asked through his teeth.

“Oh, Sam, you wound me.” Lucifer placed a hand on his chest. “I need _willing_ bleeders, I would never do something you didn’t want me to do.” He began to walk towards Gabriel. “Of course… that doesn’t mean I won’t get upset if you say no. I’m sad to say that I have… just a bit of a temper. I wouldn’t take it out on _you_ of course.” He reached Gabriel’s side and patted his head roughly. “Baby brother Gabe might not be so lucky, though.”

All three humans grimaced. Another time, Gabriel might’ve had a selfish appreciation for the unabashed terror in Sam’s eyes.

“Don’t worry, Sam,” Lucifer said. He brushed Gabriel’s hair back from his forehead before curling his fist in the locks. “You won’t have to hear him scream.”

“ _Please_ ,” Sam hissed. “Don’t—”

“I gave you my terms.” Lucifer’s grip tightened, and he tugged Gabriel’s head back—pain shot through the stitches, and for a moment Gabriel was absolutely sure that his brother was going to tear off his head. “I can make it last, Sam. I can make it _hurt_. Have you ever seen an angel lose its wings?”

Sam met Gabriel’s gaze. The young man had dark circles under his eyes, and for the second time since Gabriel had known him, he was bloodied and raw. His hair was matted and dark by his left temple. There were tears in his eyes, threatening to spill over. This impossibly strong, impossibly fragile creature, dealt shitty upon shittier hands, and somehow still standing. The world would’ve pulled Sam Winchester apart long ago if Sam Winchester had been one to let it.

Gabriel had spent most of his petty life choosing to be kept in furs. Teasing rebellion but never truly biting the hand that fed him, no matter what he really wanted.

He shook his head as much as he dared. _Don’t do this for me, Sam_.  

Sam’s brow furrowed. He gave Gabriel a helpless shrug, a tightlipped smile. Looked back at Lucifer—“I’ll do it.”

 _For fuck’s sake_.

Lucifer chuckled, letting go of Gabriel’s hair. “Hmm… later.”

“Wh-what do you mean _later_?”

“I mean,” Lucifer purred, circling back around the shackled prisoners, “I already know that you can withstand the power of the Jax. So thank you for your permission, Sam, honestly, I’m honoured. But…” He knelt behind the three of them, putting an arm around both Garth and Charlie’s shoulders. “I should really explore all my options before I commit to a sure thing, don’t you think?”

He grabbed a fistful of Garth’s shirt and stood, dragging him forward around the bonfire. Garth yelped, spat dust in the ashes.

“I-I…” he coughed, spat again. “I ain’t given you _my_ permission.”

Lucifer laughed. “No, but you will, won’t you?”

Garth hesitated. “You got somethin’ on me?”

“Smart man! And I’m sure neither you nor the sweet Bess Fitzgerald _wants_ her to be cut up and given back to you in pieces, so you understand that your choices are… limited.”

Garth blanched and shook his head. “D-do your worst.”

Lucifer patted him on the shoulder and produced a long chain that had been hidden in his shirt. At the end of it hung a pendant of oblong Jaxstone, bound in wire.

“This shard,” Lucifer said, his voice soft with reverence, “grew from my Halo. Cracked the surface of it, and when the node was broken off, the roots filled in the fissures with smooth and holy black. It is… yet another symbol of the Pitch’s will that we be freed from Equin’s rule.”

He grabbed Garth’s chin and forced his mouth open, placed the Jaxstone pendant on his tongue. Lucifer ran one sharp nail along Garth’s cheek, splitting the skin. Blood welled, and Lucifer caught it on his finger. Ferried drops onto the Jax, into Garth’s mouth.

“Partake of your flesh, and know that it will soon be mine as well.”

Garth let out a hushed sob as Lucifer gently, and with an eerie tenderness, closed his mouth and bade him suckle at the bloody stone.

Gabriel was shaking, just as Sam and now Charlie were. He _felt_ what was happening, like it was a physical weight in the air. He felt the Jax, dense and cold and sickening, seeping into Garth’s body. Felt the connection forming between Garth and Lucifer, could almost see the network piecing together. It was cold sweat and old air—it reeked of dark, damp places, long buried by time and earth.  

The air settled. The fire crackled. The cicadas had quieted.

Lucifer pulled the Jaxstone from Garth’s mouth and wiped it on the hem of his shirt. Garth doubled over and gagged emptily.

“Now we wait,” Lucifer said. “If you show no adverse effects in three days, you should be safe.” He closed his eyes, smiled. “Your mind is… peaceful, Garth. Thank you.”

Garth sat back on his heels, panting, his expression tight with pain. He groaned out a muddled curse and began muttering something that sounded like a prayer. 

“Garth,” Sam said, “Garth, hey, it’s gonna be okay.”

“Everyone’s looking after Bess, she’s waiting for you.” Charlie offered a weak smile. “You gotta make it back to see her, right?”

Gabriel would’ve laughed if he could. Even if Garth survived this, Lucifer would never let him go. His best hope of seeing Bess again would be if she, too, were forced to become a demon’s eternal blood donor—assuming she made it out alive as well.

A wash of guilt settled over him, and Gabriel clenched his jaw. If he hadn’t gone with Tamiel, if he’d dropped the motherfucker there in the street and _thought_ , maybe he could’ve stopped Lucifer. This was his fault, and he couldn’t even fucking apologize.

Garth looked at the others, at Gabriel—the terror in his face was palpable, the gratitude in his eyes painful. He held Gabriel’s gaze a bit longer, and Gabriel tried to pour everything he was feeling into that one look. _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry fuck I’m so fucking sorry_.

Garth nodded briskly. All at once, he stopped muttering. 

Then he began to scream.

At first, Gabriel almost couldn’t comprehend what was happening. It looked like Garth was turning _red_ , his pale flesh blooming like a full-body blush. But then his screams grew louder, and the redness grew darker, and black points began to appear beneath the surface of his skin. Garth burst in pinpricks, sluggish black-red oozing from his pores, his eyes. His clothes soaked through in seconds.

Lucifer had fallen, somewhere in the madness. He was curled up on the ground, twitching and moaning as Garth bled out. The demons, Ruby especially, looked like they wanted to help, but they weren’t moving—just dumbly watching the bloodshed.

Garth retched, spewing black and blood in a thick, greasy mass. He fell onto his side, met Gabriel’s eye for one fevered moment—

His shirt rode up and Gabriel watched as the skin of his belly, perforated and bleeding, dissolved into pulp and the bulging shadows of Garth’s infected guts spilled into the dust.

The hot stink of his insides roiled out in a sickening wave. Gabriel wanted to close his eyes, wanted to shut out the stark fact of the dead man before him. The glaze over Garth’s eyes reminded him of the empty stare of the dead Samandriel in Bromley—identical to the way they’d looked before, and yet so clearly, profoundly different. Two broken bodies, two machines upon which two minds depended, irreparably destroyed. 

Charlie was grinding her teeth, visibly throttling back tears. Sam just stared, unfixed and unblinking, in the vague direction of Garth’s remains. His eyes were red, but they were dry.

Lucifer groaned, slowly wobbling to his feet. Ruby ran to his side to help, but he brushed her away, albeit gently. He straightened, and sighed, and wrapped a hand around his Jaxstone pendant.

“I thought…” He shook his head. “I suppose his blood wasn’t… strong enough. Pity. He seemed nice. But hey, as the saying goes—omelet, eggs.”

“You friggin’ _monster_ ,” Charlie said, choking on a furious sob.

Lucifer didn’t even spare her a glance. He gestured at the other demons, two of whom came forward and set about cleaning up what was left of Garth and Connie. The other two grabbed Sam and Charlie, carting them back into the trailer. Ruby and Lucifer followed.

Left alone, Gabriel leaned up against the metal siding and concrete base of the trailer. The frank reality of his situation flashed in his brain like the neon silhouette of a busty girl on the face of a strip joint—impossible to ignore, and more than a little cringe inducing. He was trapped, they were all trapped, and they weren’t getting out any time soon.

He closed his eyes at last, and powered down to the sounds of the cicadas, the wind in the trees, and the crackling fire.


	18. Headache

The shed stank of moldering wood and pond scum, and its corners were covered in thick triangles of cobwebs. It was huge, and empty save for a wall of firewood, and the three shackle chains that extended from reels attached to the wall, just long enough to allow any captive a range of motion of about a foot to each side.

Charlotte knew this because she had been pacing her measly path for nearly three hours.

Hannah had given up asking her to stop when Charlotte had insisted that the repetitive futility of the action was what made it calming. They sat completely still and silent, watching Charlotte with unwavering focus.

No one had come for them. They’d been plucked from the townhouse by demons—rotting perversions of Pre-Falls, Charlotte’s broken children—and Charlotte had wanted to cry. Of all the fates she had imagined for the Fallen angels, stuck in a prolonged state of decay for over a hundred years was probably the worst. She’d passed out during the flight from New River, and awoken in the shed next to a completely shut down Hannah. After a moment’s panic and several long minutes of finagling in her shackles, Charlotte had managed to get them operational again.

“I-I-I just wish I knew what was going _on_ ,” she muttered, for what was probably the hundredth time. “Th-they can’t just _leave_ us here.”

“Perhaps that’s Lucifer’s aim,” Hannah said. “To close us in and leave you to dehydrate and myself to run out of power.”

“O-okay, stuff like that? Not helpful.” Charlotte glared.

“I’m sorry. I’m sure he’s simply too busy for us.”

“I-I really regret introducing you to Gabriel.”

After a few minutes, Charlotte stumbled in her pacing. She yelped, and that yelp became a frustrated growl became a desperate sob. She fell to her knees, cursing the decision when the impact shook her to her teeth.

“ _Fuck_!” she all-but screamed.

“Charlotte,” Hannah said quietly, “we will be all right.”

Charlotte shook her head, choking back tears. “Y-you don’t really believe that, do you?”

“The odds are most certainly against us.” Hannah extended their shackled hands, placing them on Charlotte’s knee. “But experience tells me that there is very little in this world that can be calculated so exactly as to eliminate all surprise.”

“So…” Charlotte rubbed her nose. “We j-just sit and hope for a miracle?”

“If that’s your plan, you need wait no longer.”

Charlotte jerked and fell back on her ass. Even Hannah jumped at the voice. Their eyes grew wide and their mouth crumpled and twisted in a bizarre horror show of mixed emotion as they took in the sight of the Man in the Suit for the first time.

“Ms. Shurley,” he said, adjusting his cuffs and looking fantastically bored, “you’re about to miss the next Surge.”

“How… h-how the _fuck_ did you—”

The Man sniffed. “Really, Ms. Shurley, did you think you’d hidden yourself from us? I will admit that we were briefly thrown when you crossed the border… but only briefly.”

Charlotte’s gut plummeted. The _whys_ and _hows_ of the Man’s appearance dimmed in importance. She hadn’t escaped. She never could. How could she have been stupid enough to believe that a heat-of-the-moment getaway would fool the Equin chairs? Four men who hadn’t aged in over a hundred years, who never answered any questions that might bring her closer to understanding why, who appeared in prison sheds without warning. Next to them she was a captive animal, breaking out of its enclosure only to hit the gates of the larger zoo. 

And she’d dragged everyone else right along with her.

“S-so what now?” She lifted her chin.

“Well, you’ve had your little field trip.” The Man strode over to Hannah, patted them on their bare head. “You’ve played with your broken toy, seen a bit of the world. I think it’s time to come home, don’t you?”

Charlotte grit her teeth, shocked by the sudden flare of rage welling in her. “H-Hannah’s n-not _broken_ ,” she muttered.

“Oh, I assure you, it is, and very much so.” The Man arched an eyebrow.

“That… that doesn’t m-matter, I—”

“Ms. Shurley, I’m not here to argue with you.” He sighed. “Come back with me, and I’ll see to it that your Personal faces no charges for enabling your reckless departure. How does that sound?”

Charlotte hesitated. “Wh-what about Gabriel?”

“Gabriel assisted in a terrorist attack that freed two fugitives, and caused the destruction of several Gadreel units _and_ an APkA Inquisitor. Unfortunately, we can’t ignore that. He won’t be punished, but he cannot be allowed back into Eden.” He extended a hand. “The angels need blood, Ms. Shurley.”

She shook her head. “I-I’m not going back without… I need… I n-need to know Gabriel’s safe, at least.”

The Man’s eyes narrowed into beady slits. He reached into one sleeve and pulled out a glass marble, clouded with gold and purple eddies. With a grim set to his mouth, he grabbed Charlotte’s hand and placed the marble in the center of her palm. It was cold as ice.

“Look into it,” he said.

She did.

The purple and gold began to move, twining and swirling faster and faster until they seemed to take up Charlotte’s whole field of vision, until she was borderless, expanding, and sinking into whirlpools of colour. Then—

—Lucifer, standing tall and proud as he had the day he left forever, his entire being slick with blood. Black dripped from one metallic eye, stripped of its imitative flesh. Sam stood by his side, pale and grinning through red gums. The remnants of gold wings scattered in gleaming shards at their feet, around a mass of twitching, sparking wires and torn muscle—

—Eden abandoned, another ruin grown over with stillness and Jax. Jagged nodes growing out of half-decayed bodies, the shells of broken angels. Raphael’s head on a pike at the foot of the Equin Tower, his beautiful hair all rotted away—

—Cracks in the air, like breaches in the border, shifting and moving out of sight, between trees, under rocks. Things crawling out of those cracks, out of nothing. Monstrosities and humanoids, floating balls of light and living puddles of sludge, dispersing to roam the tattered remains of the earth—

—A crackling fire in the mountains. A lean-to and a damp cave, and a rock pit stuffed with the embers of table legs and old books. The neatly-piled scrap of a decommissioned Servile angel, one who had pretended to eat for weeks before finally running out of fuel. An elderly woman, alone and warming thin, knotted hands by the flames—

Charlotte dropped the marble with a shuddering breath.

The Man in the Suit bent to pick it up, slipping it back up his sleeve. “So,” he said as he straightened his jacket, “you see why we need you to bleed, don’t you?”

Not for the first time, Charlotte asked, “Wh-what the hell are you?”

Not for the first time, the Man didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “Think on your answer. You have three days until the Surge. If you decide to give your will over to us once more, say your right words and you and Hannah will be fetched back to Eden. If you decide against it… well. Now you know the price of your freedom.”

And between blinks he was gone.

A beat, and Hannah asked, “What did you see, Charlotte?”

Charlotte said nothing. She stuffed her knuckles against her teeth, biting down around a muffled scream.

 

_“Are they ours?” asks the Man in the Wheelchair. He introduced himself as Thomas Angard at the start of the meeting, but somehow Charlotte knows that isn’t his real name. Nor is the Rotting Man really called Shaun Thasser, or the Vicious Man called Bradley Keir, and if the Man in the Suit’s true name is Zev Cameron, Charlotte will be shocked._

_She clutches the folder in her lap like a lifeline. Maybe it’s not too late to turn back. If she runs, burns the contracts, expunges all her data…_

_But she’ll never finish them without funding. She’s been laughed out of her residency, out of every grant application. Dismissed as a crackpot or worse, gently told she was “too far ahead of her time” (but oh, wasn’t she a dear for trying). Her old Dean of AppSci had called her a Daedalus—he said that her angels’ metal wings would fall apart as surely as wax ones._

_Charlotte has given so much to her designs. They sit half-built in her basement, unfinished husks subsidized by an inheritance that’s already nearly gone. She sees their one-day faces so clearly in her mind’s eye, knows every eventual freckle and eyelash. Signing the contracts in her hands will bring them to life at last._

Are they ours _? asks the Man in the Wheelchair. Of course they aren’t. And of course that’s not what he’s really asking._

_“Yes,” Charlotte says. She opens the folder on the table and snatches the pen from the Rotting Man’s hand._

She tasted blood. She screamed louder.

 

It took some time before she was calm enough to do so, but Charlotte told Hannah what she had seen in the marble.

“There’s… there’s n-no way out,” she said. “Either Lucifer fucks the world, o-or I go back and this n-never ends. I-I’m theirs forever.”

Eden’s manicured sterility, after this. Stale air and synthetic old-world meats. Calling cards and salons and drinks with Amelia Novak. All those voices, after silence.  

But Gabriel’s scattered wings and Raphael’s spiked head were burned into her mind. Even poor, ruined Sam weighed on her, the man who would risk his own neck to care for a stray dog.

Equin’s tower was a womb into which she might crawl. In there she would be safe, she would be useful, she could spend the rest of forever with Hannah by her side. She couldn’t save Gabriel—but she couldn’t save him if she stayed, either. Couldn’t so much as talk to him now, chained up in a moldering shed.  

“M-my Gabriel,” she said, and her voice cracked. “My _baby_.”

Hours passed. The light in the shed faded to near nothing, save the silver cast of moonlight through slats. Charlotte curled around a shadow, burying herself in wet scent, the whistle of the wind, and the faint chatter of bats.

“If it makes any difference,” Hannah said quietly, “I think.” They hesitated on a full stop. “I followed you here because of my fondness for you, in spite of the programming that discourages me from breaking the law. Prior to this excursion, all objective thought seemed to favour the preservation of Eden, running under the assumption that it is the last bastion of human civilization. However, that is not the case. The existence of New River begs for a sharing of resources, and an attempt at mutual support and understanding. It is. I think. It is my functional imperative to care for humanity in ways you cannot care for yourselves. This is a way in which you cannot care for yourselves.”

The soft clacking of chains, and Hannah pressed against the curve of Charlotte’s back.

“Perhaps if you returned, you could lead Eden back out into the world. You could come back for Gabriel.” 

Four faces swimming before her—putrid, violent, sickly, and bored. Four red mouths and eight open palms, offering ( _wealth_ , _fulfilled ambitions_ , _a better world and proof that you made it_ ) everything in exchange for blood and power. Fame and fortune for an Oxford on her throat. Lead? Hannah wanted her to lead? Every drop of her meager clout, watered down like weak coffee, sat in her title, not in herself. Charlotte Shurley was property as sure and as legally as Hannah the Servile.

“I-I don’t have that kind of power,” she said.

Hannah pressed closer. “You made this world.”

“And i-it’s pretty fucking broken, isn’t it?”

Hannah said nothing to that. After a moment, the pressure of them disappeared. _That’s right_ , Charlotte thought. _Hop on out, the bathwater’s cold_.

 

When Lucifer came for her, morning cast the shed in pale, feeble yellow. Charlotte woke with a mouthful of sawdust.

Lucifer was already there. It seemed he had crept in with the early chill—the sort that frosts and dews over summer dawns, belying the desert heat of the inevitable afternoon. He sat cross-legged by the woodpile, watching Charlotte with a curious, almost bird-like expression.

“She won’t wake,” he said, nodding at Hannah. “Not until we’re done.”

Charlotte sat up. She couldn’t stop trembling. She spared a glance at Hannah—they slept beside her in a frozen scalene, legs straight out in front of them and hands planted on their thighs. Her chest ached, and she thought of the cool softness of Hannah’s skin, the warmth of their arms around her.

“D-done with what?” she asked.

Lucifer smiled. His face was a putrid, macabre parody of the visage she’d made for him all those many years ago. So many hours of labour and love poured into that face, and now it sat, rotted and distorted, over the frame of Lucifer’s skull like a bad mask. Like her ( _son, her boy, her baby_ ) creation had been badly burned and plastered back together by a back-alley surgeon. Two parts of her—the pseudo-parent and the creator—wept for its state. The scientist part remained glumly fascinated by the sustained perfection of Lucifer’s teeth.

“It’s been a long time, Mother,” he said. “Tsk. A shame for a son to go so long without visiting, I do apologize. But I hope you can understand; I’ve been… indisposed.”

( _Blast, so loud, so loud and then silence_ )

(“ _You sold us like livestock and had the gall to make us capable of knowing it_.”)

She could only stare at him. After a moment, he laughed. It sounded like the clicking rasp of pebbles being ground together by an idle hand. 

“No, _you’re_ looking well, but thanks for saying so.”

Charlotte remained silent. Every half-cocked sentence fragment floating in and out of her mind was too little for this moment. Flaccid, trite, empty of true feeling, or else unfairly cruel. Or perhaps not unfairly—there had been blood, so much blood, on the streets of New River. There had been monsters, mouths bulging with gore.

 But this was _Lucifer_ , and no matter how deeply he terrified her, she was a Creator wracked with helpless love for her creation.

If Lucifer saw this love in her face, he didn’t care for it. What remained of his lips twisted in a wet snarl, and he stood quick as a gunshot.

“Have you _nothing_ for me?” he growled. “You see me here… profaning your precious blueprints by my very being, and you… you say nothing?

_I couldn’t find you when you left, I wanted to find you—I thought you were dead—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—_

“You let them use us. You built us to be more than your own muck-bellied kind, but we couldn’t be _people_ like them, could we?”

 _It was that or never build you at all_.

Lucifer grabbed a log from the woodpile and tore it in two. He split another beneath his heel. He screamed, “ _You, you, you_ ,” like a holy mantra, rending the wood to splinters.

After a moment, he stopped—not for anything so base as breath—and tilted his head towards her. The joints in his neck cracked.

“I’m glad, at least… that you got away from them.”

And Charlotte laughed.

Lucifer’s expression contorted into pure fury as he turned to face her fully, but she cut him off before he could scream again.

“Th-they know exactly where I am, kid.”

For a moment, Lucifer almost looked frightened. “You brought—”

She shook her head, still chuckling. “I _t-tried_ to get a-away, you, ah, you got that part right. But nnnope.” She popped the _p_ hard. When she had been building the archangels’ vocabularies, all four of them had picked up that particular tic and parroted it for days. _Like toddlers_ , she’d written in her notes. “They’ve come. O-old fuckers’ve come for me.”

Lucifer slid through the space like a rotting otter, undulating. He crouched in front of her, his hands tight on her shoulders.

“What do they want from me? From you? I cannot have them here, not while.” He stopped himself.

Charlotte gave a laboured shrug. “I-I… I don’t think they give two shits about you, ho-onestly. But they want me back.”

He set his mouth. “I need you here, Mother. I can’t let them take you.”

Anger spiked hot in her belly. “Oh, y-you _need_ me, huh? You do?” She tried to wrench out of his grasp and failed. “Y-you fucking _need me_ like you n-need a factory reset, Luce.”

“Are you angry with me?” he growled. “Truly, Mother, I always knew you were a hypocrite, but this is a new low.”

“I-I d-don’t have to—I don’t know, help you or b-be your example or—”

“ _Then why did I_?”

Lucifer lifted her up off the ground and threw her at the wall of the shed. Her head whipped against the wood and the world went wet-blurry, pain blooming through her skull and neck. Lucifer charged on her again, grabbing her by the arm and flinging her as far as her chains would allow. She landed hard on her back, the wind knocked clean out of her.

“ _Why me, Mother_? _Why was I their scapegoat_?”

He was screaming, but the sound was faraway, muted by the ringing in her ears. Her wrists stung where they’d been scraped against the shackles. Charlotte struggled to her elbows, then Lucifer was on her again. He wrapped gnarled hands around her throat, knocked her head into the dirt once, twice, again.

“ _Why did I have to follow_? _WHY DID I HAVE TO BE USED_?”

The world was burning at the edges, turning ash black and orange. Warmth leaked through her, pooling like

( _a hot bath_ )

blood in her fingertips. Lucifer wasn’t squeezing, wasn’t choking her, but breath was coming rough and sparse.

When the black was spangled with whitish stars, Lucifer dropped her. She felt herself breathe deep, felt it scorch on the way down. Her hands and feet were tingling, and she felt the warmth in the back of her head begin to trickle down her neck—not just _like_ blood, then.

Lucifer was still beside her, on his knees. He brushed his fingers through her hair, pushing damp black curls away from her forehead.

“You shouldn’t have made us if you didn’t know what to do with us,” he muttered. “Too much too fast, Mother dearest. You were…” He choked out a laugh. “You were just a stupid kid, weren’t you? A middle-aged child. I’d say it’s a shame humans don’t live long enough to achieve any real wisdom, but you’ve hardly changed in a hundred and fifteen years, so….”

She opened her mouth, but the only sound that came out was a rusty squeak. Lucifer shushed her, tweaked her nose.

“Don’t strain yourself. Hm. Now this _is_ a troubling wrench… I’ll have to consult my followers on what to do about Equin.” 

He left, but if pressed Charlotte would not have been able to remember him leaving. If pressed Charlotte would not have remembered much about the next few hours. She crawled to Hannah and

( _space_ )

placed her hands on their Halo, tapped half their sequence and pressed her forehead to their shoulder, the sudden urge to sleep washing over her. She knew she shouldn’t, but her eyes were heavy, her head was throbbing, her neck was wet and hot. Her cheeks stung warm, like she’d sat in front of a fire too long. Her chest was tight and her throat stoppered up with bile. Her fingers shook as she tried to tap out the rest of Hannah’s sequence and

( _space_ )

how could he have done this to her? But of course she knew. She knew and she didn’t blame him, even as she shook with pain and rage and misery, even as her eyes burned. Hannah, awake, stared at the

( _space_ )

where her hair was matted and bloody, their fingers gingerly prodding at the raw, split flesh.

“Charlotte, you need help.”

“H-he said he n-needs me, he won’t let me die.” Of course, she had no way of knowing whether or not that was true.

The floor tilted and swung every time she moved, so she stopped moving. Pressed herself up against the chain spool, fixed her vision on a shard of splintered wood on the other side of the shed. Breathed in measured puffs to stave off the hotsick feeling pulsing in her gut.

Hannah told her: “Perhaps you should call for Equin.”

Charlotte hummed. “I-I

( _space_ )

can’t f-feel my fingers,” she gave them a weak wiggle, watched them moved but only felt a far-off tingle.

Hannah curled their hands around Charlotte’s wrists. “This will pass. It’s a common symptom of concussions, it will pass.”

Charlotte nodded, immediately regretted it. She winced, and Hannah mirrored the expression clumsily.

“Sleep,” they said. “Just for half an hour, then I’ll wake you.”

 

When next she woke, Hannah was nowhere to be found.


	19. The King-O-Naught

The air was heady-sweet with smoke and blood and the silty, green smell of lake water. The ground was stained with shadows pulled long like gum. Gabriel came back online to find a platter at his feet, piled high with sliced yellow fruit and sprigs of deep black-red berries. Flies made detours from the nearby puddle of sunbaked gore to light on the fruit, their tubular mouths pulsing curiously over the dewslick flesh.

Gabriel reached for the platter, shooed the flies with a weak gesture. The berries were bitter and the fruit tasted like stagnant water, but he could feel his biofuel converter humming to life as he ate, and soon he’d scarfed down the lot.

He settled back against the side of the trailer.

And in a sudden wave of sick, he emptied his belly into the dirt.

 _ERROR_ _—_ BIOMASS IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH FUEL CONVERTER

 _Shit_.

Gabriel ran a scan of his digestive components, and learned that the so-called “invasive malware” was corrupting the processors. Vegetative matter was no longer digestible.

_< Other _ _MINOR_ _instances of corruption have occurred. Would you like to view the complete report at this time? >_

Gabriel disengaged the scan. Invented a colourful curse that he couldn’t wait to try out on someone.

Two hours passed. The shadows stretched until taut with black, then began to fade with the setting sun. Twilight brought more insects, cicadas again, and a gaggle of demons to coax the fire back to life. About ten sat and stood around, chattering in their distorted tongue. Tamiel emerged from the trailer, wheeling what looked like a handmade trolley piled high with cuts of rare, roasted meat. The demons ate, grease glistening on their ragged lips and red juice dripping down their fingers. A couple tossed their half-chewed bones at Gabriel’s feet, still stuck with chunks of pink flesh.

“Et, ah, lest ye keelor,” one laughed, and kicked up dust at the bones. “Fleshlover. Proven ye yer likin.” 

 _Prove your liking_.

The meat looked so goddamn fresh.

Gabriel smiled, wide and manic, and flipped the demon the bird.

 

The sun rose to find Gabriel jostled into consciousness by his emergency protocol, his system begging him to refuel before he powered down for good.

With a shudder, he chewed the cold bones clean and cracked them open for marrow.

 

Lucifer paced the dustyard that morning, hardly looking at Gabriel by the wall. He paused every once in a while, freezing entirely for a split second before resuming his pattern. He muttered to himself in that strange demonic tongue, so fast and garbled Gabriel caught less than a quarter of the words. Snide comments sprouted in Gabriel’s mind, and he’d never realized how powerless he’d feel without his voice, but here, chained up and staring dumbly at the remains of his brother, he was utterly impotent.

Finally, Lucifer stopped and spared him a glance. “Taking you from New River was… supposed to build to something much grander than this.” He almost pouted. “But here we are.”

He began to approach Gabriel, looking grim. “I will provide you with a letter. You will give it to Samuel Campbell and you will make him read it. And you will tell him to do as I say, or I’ll be forced to take my anger out on others.” His mouth tipped up, thin and red. “You know I have trouble with self-control.”

Gabriel raised a skeptical eyebrow. Visions of a half-dead Sam with blackened veins flashed through his mind.

Lucifer’s wirecurl smile spread wider. “Don’t underestimate me, brother. That’s a bad, _bad_ idea.”

He knelt and unlocked the shackles—before Gabriel could make a move, Lucifer grabbed his wrists tight and leaned in close. His lips grazed Gabriel’s ear. “I can use him until his heart stops beating. I don’t want to hurt him, Gabriel, but… know that there’s a _lot_ I can do to him before that happens.”

Gabriel didn’t doubt it. He processed his options as Lucifer pressed a yellowed envelope into his open palms. Obey, or run. A part of him wanted so very badly to run—it always had. When the world fell, when Lucifer beckoned, when Michael demanded fealty. As he watched unlucky humans pounding raw-meat fists against the burning border code, as Naomi filled his info banks with target dossiers. The

( _Cru-u-u-nch_ )

of bones and the screams of those he’d entrapped as GadreelsCastielsWhoevers dragged them away. Running wasn’t smart, it wasn’t an optimal decision, but he’d ached for that escape.

Now it was his. All he’d have to sacrifice was Sam’s life, Charlie’s life—and they were short, ugly things, in the end. Short, ugly things, and yet…

And yet.

He wished he could laugh at the irony. The sweeping, world-ending battle between his siblings hadn’t been enough to sway him to make a stand. And here he was, stuck on a heap of organic wetware.

He closed his hands around the envelope and nodded. Lucifer brought a hand to the back of Gabriel’s skull and pressed their foreheads together.

“It doesn’t have to be like this, Gabe,” he said. “You know… you know that I’ll welcome you home, if you change your mind? Even now.” He pulled back, and his eyes were earnest. “I could save Sam for you. If you want him, he’s yours.”

Gabriel smiled thinly and nodded again.

Lucifer beamed and tapped against Gabriel’s Halo until the world went black.

 

They kept him shut off until they were well on the road to New River. Gabriel was brought online in a cage—wooden slats for roof and floor, and unfinished iron bars. He turned slightly to see Ruby standing on the other side of the bars, hands on her hips and wings unfolded.  

“Feeling… okay?”

Gabriel blinked at her. The cage was on wheels, he realized, with canvas curtains tied in tight rolls at the top of each side. A ghost deer was hitched to the front; it was muzzled, and its eyes were so dilated they looked black. The stench of rot wafted off it in humid gusts.

Ruby snapped her fingers under his nose. “Oi!”

He glared. Shrugged. Craved the ability to tell her he was pretty sure all this stop-starting was bad for his sanity, and would she be a dear and plug a silver bullet in his motherboard if he started howling at the moon?

She seemed to take that as a yes, and flew to the top of the cage. The ghost deer started moving shortly thereafter.

They were heading back into scrubland—crawling down the side of a hill into a valley funneled between snow-capped peaks whose slopes were green with pine. Gabriel watched the road wind between rolling mounds of dust and sagebrush; he saw the angled, saltwhite scar of an abandoned quarry. The heat of the afternoon sun was stark and desert dry. It tilted into Gabriel’s eyes.

He wondered where they were keeping Sam and Charlie—hopefully somewhere shaded. There had been greenery behind the trailer; perhaps they’d been stashed in a cool place, under the trees.

The envelope, he found, had been left inside his shirt. He pulled it out now. Lucifer’s lettering across the front was bold but clumsy, like a child had written it, a child struggling with each too-too complex character: _FOR SAMUEL CAMPBELL_ , it read, in charcoal. The triangular flap at the back had been tucked into the slot instead of glued shut, so, naturally, Gabriel slid it open. Inside was a note scribed in the same labored hand:

_CAMPBELL,_

_IT IS NOW TIME. WE BOTH KNOW THE TOWER HAS STOOD TOO LONG. THE HORSES WILL FALL AND THE CHATTEL IN THAT VILE CAGE WILL CHOKE ON THEIR WRETCHED GUTS._

_I IMPLORE YOU: JOIN ME!_

_YOU KNOW MY STRENGTH AND YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT. PLEASE, SAMUEL, DO NOT BE A FOOL. SEND AN ENVOY WITH MY MESSENGER, RUBY, AND SAVE WHAT REMAINS OF YOUR PEOPLE. THERE’S NO NEED FOR ANY MORE TO DIE._

_WE REQUIRE SOLDIERS, SPIES, AND THE RESOURCES OF NEW RIVER. WE REQUIRE ACCESS TO YOUR GRACE CODE ARCHIVES AND RESEARCH. AND IN EXCHANGE ALL WE ASK IS PARTNERSHIP._

Then at the bottom, in a miraculously tighter script, burrowed so thick and deep in the paper it was raised inverse on the back:

_remember you your his’try and remember you my words_

_remember you your his’try and remember you my words_

_remember you your his’try and remember you my words_

There was no signature.

Gabriel’s circuits buzzed electric warning up and down his limbs. His wings, now vestigial masses of hardware in his back, trembled in their casings. He scanned the tight lines again, the feeling growing cruelly stronger in his struck appendages. It read like poetry, like a meditation, like madness. The tagline of the demonic resistance—join the dark side, Sammy C, what we lack in sanity we make up for in batshit mantras.

Of course, he could be missing something. In fact, he was _absolutely_ missing something, some crucial piece of understanding that Campbell had, because Campbell had been in contact with Lucifer. The familiarity of the letter could mean nothing else.

Gabriel thought of Garth, of Connie, of Bug-Eyes, of Charlie and (his) Sam. He swallowed fury as he tucked the letter away. Voice or no voice, he would parley with the Big Man tonight. 

 

———

 

Charlotte couldn’t decide which was worse—the acid hunger gnawing at her gut, the sawdust gum of her parched throat, or Hannah’s continued, pointed absence.

Thirst won after the sixth hour.

For the however-manyeth time that day, she checked the small tin that had appeared in Hannah’s place while she was unconscious. When it had arrived, it had been half-full of lukewarm, vaguely silty water. It had since been sucked clean of every lingering droplet, plucked out on the tips of Charlotte’s dusty fingers. That didn’t stop her from glancing inside every twenty-odd minutes in hopes that the metal might’ve sweated out a sip or two. So far, she’d had no such luck.

Charlotte squeezed the thin edge of the tin against her palm, chewing a nail on her other hand.

A dozen rusty clicks, the rattle of chains, and then Lucifer burst through the door to the shed.

“Mother,” he said, “we’ve run out of time for games.” He knelt beside her, tore the tin cup from her grasp and replaced it with a plump waterskin. “Food and Hannah next, if you’ll play nice.”

Without thinking, Charlotte popped the cap on the waterskin and latched onto it like a baby to a breast. Her stomach groaned and stung as the cool stream pooled inside it—Lucifer pulled it away from her mouth with surprising gentleness, smiling.

“Don’t want you to throw up,” he said, and chuckled. “Still haven’t any idea how to take care of yourself, hm?”

Charlotte glared at him. “Where’s Hannah?”

“Tsk. All business.”

“I’m sorry, did you already f-forget bashing m-my head into the floor? A-and I thought _I_ was the one with the concussion.”

Lucifer’s face shuttered. “I can’t be held responsible for my programmed behavioural patterns, Mother, now, can I?”

“I p-programmed you to make a-autonomous choices, you dick.”

His mouth twitched. “She’s safe. But whether or not she continues to be so depends entirely on how well you cooperate with me now.”

Nausea spun Charlotte’s gut like a washing machine, her half-belly of water sloshing noisomely. Her head throbbed.

“I love you, Mother,” Lucifer said quietly, reaching forward to thumb a bruise that had bloomed on one of her shackled wrists. “But I feel nothing for Hannah. Imagine what I could do to her.”

The urge to beg some empathy from the creature she’d raised from a plasticine model waged bloody war with the urge to spit in his eye.

“Wh-what do you _want_?” The words came out in a breathless wail.

“What do I want? Why, Mother, I want to go home.”

He spoke with the lilting tremor of affected pathos, but she could hear the truth in it—some grasping hunger, some measure of desperation. The exposed innards of his face flashed and glinted like wet eyes. Charlotte said nothing.

“I want,” he exhaled, “I want Eden. For _me_ , you understand. I have found a way to live independently, to evolve apart from your will. But I need blood, I need resources, I need technology if this… troupe of walking corpses I call companions is to be anything other than a village of cave ‘bots.” He tilted his head, and his expression became one of intense, hateful pity. “Humanity’s time is over, Mother. You created your own next logical step, but your kind still _insists_ on clinging to the last vestiges of its reign.”

Charlotte blinked. A slow smile crept across her face, the first genuine sense of hope she’d felt in years blooming in her chest. “You need me to get you in.”

Lucifer nodded, seemingly oblivious to her change in demeanor. “I do. Breaches are impossible to predict, and your barrier is… well-crafted.”

“A-and you’ll hurt Hannah if I don’t tell you how to get through, huh?”

That caught his attention. She watched his expression freeze, imagined she could hear the whirr of a cooling fan as he narrowed his eyes.

“What do you—?”

Charlotte opened her mouth, its corners pointed in a grin.

She’d never had occasion to use the words before. The Man in the Wheelchair had handed her a slip of paper in exchange for signing their contract—scrawled over with familiar letters forming unfamiliar words. He had cleared his ragged throat and pronounced them for her; his voice was quiet, but it still seemed to rattle her skull. He placed his delicate hand over hers, closing her grip on the paper.

“Memorize them,” he’d said. “Don’t be caught without them. These are the right words by which to call us; the _only_ words.”

But she’d never needed to call. She’d never been without them and wanted to rectify the fact. Now…

Now she took a fat gulp of water from the skin, wiped her lips on the back of her hand. Now she cleared her decidedly unragged throat and said—

“I love you, kiddo, and I always will.” Her smile widened. “But go fuck yourself.”

And before Lucifer could react: “ _Bakhe. Shathis. Tuzan. Zikam_ — _omæ!_ ”  

The world tilted on its axis. The air creased and unspooled, there was a trilling, whispered _snap_ , and Charlotte and Lucifer’s bodies were separated by an extra three and a half inches. Charlotte tasted pennies, but she knew without checking that there was no blood in her mouth.

The Man in the Suit and the Vicious Man stood behind Lucifer. The world righted itself with a filthy little twist, and Charlotte’s nostrils burned with the scent of chlorine and bleach. The Vicious Man’s mouth spread in a slim, red crescent.

“ _Iamo_ ,” he boomed. “You called us!”

He lunged around Lucifer, one meaty hand extended. The second his fingertips brushed Charlotte’s forehead, that heady chlorine smell grew stronger—she was enveloped in blazing orange, gradiating to milky, jaundiced white. Her shackles dissolved, and the moment they did she reached a trembling hand to stay the Vicious Man’s wrist.  

“Hannah,” she said, meeting his beady eye.

He grunted, and the orange blinked away.

They were in a narrow room with wooden walls, stuffed with moth-eaten couches, and featuring an ancient wrought iron stove. Hannah had been tossed in a ragdoll heap by a meager woodpile in the corner.

The room was devoid of demons, but Charlotte heard shouts from somewhere else in the trailer and knew that it wouldn’t remain so for long. She grabbed Hannah’s forearm with her free hand just as a cluster of demons thundered inside.

Her scream for the Vicious Man to _get fucking going_ caught on terror, but he knew what she wanted. They entered into that blazing space once more, Hannah in tow.

Charlotte was full of movement. Every molecule of her body was propelling, flying, going _somewhere_ , but she was not moving. She felt solid ground beneath her knees. She was still, yet violently altered in spatiality all the same.

Somehow, as they went, she heard Lucifer’s voice—and Gabriel’s, fragmented and speaking over each other at a frequency that rattled her teeth.

“ _GET—AWAY—SHE—GO_!” screamed Lucifer.

And overtop him, Gabriel said

 

———

 

 _Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you_.

Gabriel projected his thoughts as loudly as he could into New River, hoping that Samuel Campbell knew how deeply the archangel hated him.

The remains of the city’s wall were guarded by a handful of demons, lounging on stones and muttering to each other. A few sat in a line with their wings out, preening each other’s crooked, blackened feathers. They waved Ruby and her cart inside, and Ruby took him down a ruined thoroughfare.

New River stank. On this side of the city, buildings were charred and crumbling in the wake of the explosions that had netted the demons their access. Some of the smaller creatures that had assisted in the invasion were scuttling in the rubble. One of them raised its leathery head, sniffing in Gabriel’s general direction. It blinked one milky, yellowish eye, then the other, then ducked out of sight once more.

 Demons prowled the streets. Some herded animals between buildings; others hauled rolled-up tarps towards the hole in the wall. Gabriel guessed what was inside them well before he registered the smell of corpse. With almost all his senses disabled, he couldn’t gauge the presence of any humanoid organics—he caught glimpses through the windows of heavily guarded buildings, but he had no way of knowing how many were still alive.

If his mother was still alive.

Ruby brought him to the base of the tall building where the Big Man dwelled. She stopped and released Gabriel from his cage, keeping one hand on the base of his neck as she directed him towards the elevators.

“De… liver the… letter,” she said. “Wait… for his… response. Convince… him… if you… must.”

Gabriel shot a look over his shoulder. _And how am I supposed to do that, all Little-Mermaided up like this_?

Ruby sneered at his expression.

They reached Campbell’s floor. Two demons flanked the door to his suite, but the rest of the floor—perhaps the building?—seemed empty.

“King-o-naught’s fer ya, eh?” one of them asked Ruby.

“Him,” she said, giving Gabriel a light shake.

The other demon snickered and opened the door.

Behind his desk, beside the taxidermied monster, Samuel Campbell sat with his head in his hands. He looked up when Ruby shoved Gabriel inside, expression flagging as the door slammed shut.

“So, at last you’ve come to join the good fight,” he said, his voice too heavy and too tired to sting. “Now the question becomes, are you an ambassador or a double agent?”  

Gabriel kept his face neutral. He came forward and placed the letter on Campbell’s desk. Grabbed a nearby chair and sat down.

“No, please, make yourself at home,” Campbell muttered. He fingered the edge of the envelope. “This… this is from him, isn’t it?”

Gabriel nodded.

Campbell narrowed his eyes. “Got quiet, didn’t you?”

Gabriel gestured to his poorly patched throat. Shrugged.

“I see.” A phantom smile tugged at the corners of Campbell’s mouth. “No love lost between you, huh?”

 _I could say the same to you_ , Gabriel thought. The entire invasion of New River seemed to have been an exercise in humiliation. Reducing Campbell’s manpower, his will, his authority to nothing, confining him to his empty town hall and his now-meaningless office.

Campbell read the letter with a stone, pale face. When he finished, he rubbed his eyes with his free hand, shoulders shaking.

“I should’ve known… I thought our defenses would hold, I thought…” He curled his fist around the letter and slammed it into the desk. “Goddamn him. And goddamn _you_.” Campbell stood, looming over Gabriel with an expression of empty fury. “And that Tar Queen _bitch_.”

Gabriel leapt to his feet. In the same instant, Campbell leveled his Jax-Grace gun at the archangel’s face.

“Try it,” he snarled. “Just fucking try it—deal or no deal, I’ll put you _and_ that godforsaken hellbot in the ground.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. _Sure you will_. _That’s why he took the city_.

Campbell cocked the gun. Gabriel felt the slow itch of the Jax creeping over his skin again, and he sat back down. The gun lowered, but Campbell kept it in his hand as he collapsed back as well.

“You know what he’s asking?” Campbell asked. At Gabriel’s nod, he sighed. “He came to me. Years ago, on a routine harvest. Made himself out to be a lone wolf, just another demon with an agenda. I didn’t know—people disappear all the time in the wilds, there was no sign that they were organized.

“I told him then that taking down Equin wasn’t worth siding with his kind. He told me…” Campbell closed his eyes. “He told me that humanity was once undone by his kind, and it would only survive by his grace.”

For a long, long time, Campbell was silent. He almost seemed to forget that Gabriel was there, his hand going slack on the gun. Gabriel waited.

At last, Campbell looked up, his brows drawn and his mouth set.

“My duty is to protect my people. My _family_.” His voice did not waver as he spoke. “I won’t let them die like rats in their own homes.”

Gabriel remained still and blank-faced as Campbell reached his decision. He wouldn’t dare say it even if he could, but he knew that he would’ve made the exact same choice.

 

The news spread quickly. Campbell told Ruby, who relayed it to Lucifer and the others, and shortly thereafter cries of triumph could be heard ringing throughout New River. From what Gabriel could glean, the remaining populace of the city was to remain where they were until Lucifer arrived with the rest of his followers.

Ruby clapped him on the shoulder as she led him to another room in the building. “You’ll… stay here… tonight,” she told him, grinning. “Then… free to roam… city.” 

Gabriel blew air out his nose in a pathetic attempt at a scoff.

The moment Ruby left him (and locked the door behind her, because he was just so free), he dashed to the window of his room. It overlooked the lake—the harbour had been half-sunk, with only a petty few vessels still potentially waterworthy. It was also guarded by at least three lumbering, giant, hairy turtle-things with too many eyes and not enough face.

Going through the town itself would likely prove too dangerous. But if Gabriel could somehow sneak by those ugly beasts, the water could provide an easy escape.

Still, an escape without Sam. Without Charlotte, without Hannah. As for Charlie and the others… Gabriel would never tell them so, but he could live with their blood on his hands. How far could he get, he wondered, dragging a minimum of three others with him? Hannah would make a good getaway flyer—at the very least, maybe they could get Charlotte out.

Gabriel rested his forehead against the glass. This was all running on the assumption that everyone was still alive and whole. As far as he knew, he was the only member of their merry band of expats who wasn’t currently dead or in chains. And what if they did escape? What did that mean? A return to Eden, hoping they were limping far enough ahead that they could warn Equin of the coming storm? Or a life on the run, scavenging for spare parts and sleeping under the stars?

It might be nice, he supposed, to spend forever in the wilds. It might be nice, until Sam and Charlotte inevitably wasted away, and he and Hannah were left alone. Lucifer’s plan to make blood sources of individual humans suddenly sounded like a decent option—one that Gabriel was sure Sam would never take.

Gabriel smiled thinly. He really was doomed when it came to Sam, no matter what happened. Sam was flesh and blood and liked it that way, and he was going to die sooner or later. And Gabriel… well, even if there were an afterlife, Gabriel would never get there.

He straightened, regulating that gloomy train of thought to the back of his mind. Continuing to wallow would do him no favours. Instead he planned, and he waited for Lucifer to reach the city once more.


	20. Again, For the First Time

The tower was quiet. The Surge was scheduled in four days time, and Charlotte was confined to the penthouse until then. Hannah was quiet too—quiet and still. Simply re-entering Eden hadn’t reintegrated them into the network; Charlotte guessed it would take the Surge to do so.

They sat around like lumps for the first day, and spun their wheels for the second, speaking little and moving less.

On the third day, Charlotte didn’t want to get out of bed. Sunlight pooled across her sheets, and she was too lazy to reach out and thumb the control pad that would darken the windows. Instead she curled in tighter, cocooning herself in her comforter. She had thought—she didn’t know what she had thought. That she would feel better, perhaps, knowing that she had done her part to stop Lucifer and save what was left of the world. But she had left Gabriel out there. She had left Gabriel, and now her old haunt was swallowing her up once more, and saving the world felt a lot more like crushing depression than she had expected.

 _Stupid, selfish_. She tried to stop the thought but it bubbled up unbidden. _You were never meant to get away_. _Selfish, to think you had the right_.

Charlotte wept noisily. She was so wrapped up in her own misery that she barely registered the dip of the mattress beside her. After a few more minutes, she wiped her nose on the pillowcase and rolled over, only to find herself nose-to-nose with Hannah.

She yelped and started, but didn’t push away. Hannah blinked, and extended a tentative hand to thumb the corner of Charlotte’s eye.

“You did the right thing,” they said.

Charlotte hacked out a laugh. “S-sure. The right thing f-for _me_.”

“What choice did you have, Charlotte? You would have died, or you would have given Lucifer what he wanted. Either outcome would have been devastating.” 

“Oh god, I should’ve f-fucking died,” Charlotte groaned, sitting up. Hannah followed her example. “I-I wish I had, I’m o-only good for, for helping _them_. Equin or Lucifer, t-take your fucking pick. I-I just picked the ones wh-who keep me alive. Because I’m _selfish_ , Hannah, don’t you g-get it? I’ve only ever been out for me, and-and-and that’s why the world’s fucked! Because I _had_ to b-build the archangels, because I was too much of a fucking c-coward to stop what became of them. Because I had to s-save you, Hannah, but I c-couldn’t…” She ground her teeth. “I c-couldn’t let Lucifer in here, either. I was never going to let him kill me, Hannah, I was n-never gonna leave you.”

Beside her, Hannah made a soft noise. Charlotte couldn’t look at them. “I d-don’t regret saving you. I didn’t mean that. I-I-I just… wish there was a third option.”  

Hannah placed their hand back on Charlotte’s cheek and turned her head towards them. Their brow was furrowed, but they were smiling; Charlotte couldn’t tell which expression was intentional.

They opened their mouth, and then closed it again. Then—“Charlotte, you could have left me. I am replaceable. It is unlikely that other units in my line share my exact dysfunction of which you seem to be so fond—” Charlotte laughed. “—but I am one of many. I’m certainly not worth your freedom.”

Their palm was soft, their mouth a gentle curve of petal pink. Their eyes were earnest, their lashes black and long.

Charlotte was kissing them before she knew what she was doing. Hannah stiffened, then relaxed into it, returning the kiss with the same unpracticed enthusiasm. Their hands remained on Charlotte’s face, and Charlotte wrapped her arms around Hannah’s middle, pulling them close. They tasted vaguely sweet, and vaguely chemical, but their mouth was warm and wet and _god_ , Charlotte could drown in it.

She pulled back ever so slightly, her nose bumping Hannah’s. “You’re right,” she said breathlessly, “you’re worth a _lot_ more than that.”

 

———

 

On the first day, Lucifer arrived.

He and his followers were all moved into Campbell’s building; Gabriel could hear them shifting and talking in the rooms around him. The room was unlocked shortly thereafter, and Gabriel was given the go-ahead to roam. He did so, ensuring that he was always within sight of at least one demon and trying to suss out what information he could.

Lucifer’s numbers, including his hordes of mutated beasts, were formidable. His communication with them seemed to be almost entirely via their hivemind, as they were always engaged in some form of preparation for their march on Eden, but never congregated all in one place for planning. Gabriel watched as they gathered up supplies and weapon caches. He watched as humans were led in single file lines into the Big Man’s building. He heard many of them scream. He saw many of their bodies being ferried to the pub. Others simply never emerged at all.

By the end of the second day, Gabriel still hadn’t managed to find Sam, Charlie, or anyone else he recognized. On the morning of the third day, he decided to head to the townhouse itself.

There were almost no guards this far from the city’s primary hub—plenty of scavenging monsters, though, and Gabriel did his best to avoid them. He found the townhouse complex in ruins. Several roofs had been caved in, windows torn open, doors ripped off their hinges. Each and every one had been trashed inside—the Fitzgeralds’ most of all. The clothier’s shop was badly burned, their inventory reduced to charred and ashy lumps.

Gabriel’s biofuel converter hummed, almost guiltily.

The Winchester and co.’s townhouse had been ransacked, but not quite to the same degree. The junk room was almost empty now, and someone had blocked off the entrance to the lab with a busted old wardrobe. Gabriel didn’t bother moving it.

When he left, he walked along the quarantine wall. Much of it had been torn down for parts, but it still stood fairly tall. Gabriel caught sight of the demolished pulley system, the research station standing gutted beside it. One of the leather-headed creatures scuttled past him, snuffling thickly and baring its teeth.

Gabriel paced the wall once more, keeping his eyes peeled for some half-measure of a clue, _anything_ he might’ve overlooked.

Then he saw it. Tucked away in a shadow, barely visible but there all the same—a hidden pulley and harness, completely intact.

Gabriel could’ve laughed. He sprinted to the pulley, making sure he wasn’t being watched by anyone other than the errant monster. In a few short moments, he was over the wall.

The atmosphere changed the second he crossed over. The air cooled, the smell of New River disappeared almost entirely, replaced by the sickly sweet scent of rotten meat. He spied signs of live movement from not too long ago, and followed them deeper into the quarantined depths of the city.

He realized he was being followed five minutes in. He kept his ear trained on the sound of their footsteps, identifying his stalker as a quadruped but unable to determine exactly what kind. He picked up his pace, and so did they.

The thing drew closer, and Gabriel ducked behind a half-crumbled wall, out of sight. A moment later, the culprit revealed itself—a skinny, patchy-looking dog.

Gabriel rolled his eyes at his own foolishness, and slowly emerged from his hiding spot. He extended a hand to the dog, who froze and began slowly, cautiously wagging its tail.

Gabriel knelt, made gestures that he hoped were welcoming. The creature padded towards him, sniffed his palm.

 _That’s it, pretty thing_ , he thought, smiling and stroking the dog’s head. _Poor puppy, poor baby_.

The dog—a she, Gabriel noted—licked his wrist and nosed forward, dragging wet kisses across his chest and face. She whined and pressed her body against his, begging for more pets. His smile widened and he spent a while longer coddling the poor thing—who knew how long she’d been alone over here, starved for affection and companionship? _I can always spare time for a lady in need_ , he thought at her, and winked. Old habits really did die hard.

When he stood, she followed, and he let her.

They made it to the far wall without finding hide or hair of anyone else. The dog showed him to a shelter where she appeared to have been living—she’d clearly been eating out of a spilled bag of surprisingly fresh dry food, but there was no water in her bowl. Gabriel fetched her some from a nearby ground pump and wondered who had been looking after her up until this point.

Once she was watered, Gabriel kept up his search. After an hour had passed, resigned hopelessness set in—he was alone, he wasn’t going to find any help. Dean and Castiel and Ash and Benny were either dead or about to become demon-batteries, and Gabriel didn’t have the time or strength to spring them all.

But the universe, with all its powers of coincidence and serendipity, conspired to throw him a bone. He and the dog turned a corner and found themselves face to face with three figures in protective masks—Dean, Castiel, and Jody, one of the patrolwomen Gabriel had met on his first day in New River.

“ _Gabriel_?” Castiel’s eyes widened. “What are you doing here?”

Gabriel gestured to his wounded throat. Realization dawned in the trio’s eyes. Castiel broke formation and pulled Gabriel into a tight embrace.

“We thought you were dead.”

Jody shrugged a shoulder, reaching out to meet the dog’s questioning muzzle. “ _I_ thought they turned you. But I’m always happy to be proven wrong when I’m being a pessimistic fuck.”

Dean laughed, adjusting his grip on the quarterstaff in his hands. It wasn’t on, but Gabriel saw his fingers inching towards the trigger. “Innocent until proven guilty, man, just remember that. Welcome back.”

They led Gabriel and his flea-bitten companion to the basement of one of the ruined buildings. There they found Ash, Donna, Bess Fitzgerald, and a haunted-looking young Ben curled up next to two women Gabriel didn’t recognize.

The dog immediately began introducing herself to everyone, barking like a happy seal. She managed to coax feeble smiles out of almost all of them, and eventually sat herself down next to Ben, licking his ear. He patted her weakly.

 Gabriel cast a sharp look at Cas, who nodded. “We’re what’s left,” he said. “Garth, Sam, Charlie, they were all taken. And Benny and Lisa…”

“They didn’t make it,” Ash said quietly. He stared at his hands.

As Dean, Jody, and Castiel peeled out of their protective gear, Gabriel found a seat next to Donna. He tried not to meet Bess’ eye.

Dean introduced the unfamiliar women as Ellen and Jo Harvelle, and then proceeded to explain what had happened after Gabriel left. The lot of them had initially thought the demons would come after their research, and defended their end of the city for hours. Sam, crippled by pain, had been instructed to stay inside. Of course, that didn’t last long—the fool had come stumbling out some time later, carrying the gun he’d used to threaten Gabriel all those weeks ago. One of the demons took advantage of his weakened state and snatched him, with others coming for Garth and Charlie shortly after. They’d swooped on those three _specifically_ , Dean said, as if they’d known exactly which people they wanted to take. Gabriel was thankful he couldn’t confirm that they had.

After the kidnappings, it was all a blur. Benny fell sometime in there—Ash supplied that he’d thrown himself in front of a projectile aimed at Ash’s head. Young Ben had stumbled into their local fight alone, running from one of the insect creatures and sobbing. The Harvelles lost Ellen’s husband and Jo’s father, Bill, to that same creature a minute later.

It was Cas who suggested going into the quarantine. Well—to hear him tell it, he’d dragged everyone over.

(Dean laughed humourlessly, and Cas curled a comforting arm around him. The two leaned against each other, and the pain in Dean’s eyes was offset by the clear relief he found in Cas’ touch.)

By that point there was nothing after them but the mutants themselves, and they hadn’t been spied by any of Lucifer’s more intelligent followers. Cas had gone over the next day to gather a small supply cache, but other than that they’d been stuck in the basement, going out in shifts to patrol the area.

“The rats are starting to look pretty tasty,” Donna said with a humourless grin. As empty as the expression was, her dimple was infectious, and Gabriel returned the smile anyway.

“We know they’re still out there, we’ve seen them flyin’ over,” Ellen said. “We got no idea how long they’re plannin’ on stayin’, though. They might just starve us out.”

“Which is _why_ ,” Jo muttered, “I say we make a break for it.”

“We’ll be overrun in minutes, girl. I ain’t losin’ you too.”

Silence fell. Gabriel knew that Ellen was right—there was no way they could all make it out undetected, and judging by their minimal man and firepower, fighting their way to the city gates would be tantamount to suicide. They needed a distraction, or at least _some_ kind of plan, but they had almost no resources to enact one.

Bess touched Gabriel’s shoulder. “Did you see him? Garth? Do you know where they took him?”

Gabriel froze. Slowly, he nodded.

He hated the light that shone in Bess’ eyes at that. “Is he all right?”

By the way her expression fell, he knew that his told her everything.

 

———

 

Charlotte and Hannah spent the rest of that day in bed. There was no drifting below the belt, save for a few thigh grazings. Truth be told, even now, with Hannah in her arms, Charlotte felt absolutely no desire to do more than hold and kiss them. _And “asexual” sticks the landing_.

Hands still roamed, however, with Hannah being seemingly fascinated by the way Charlotte’s skin felt against theirs.

“You’re so soft,” they remarked, before planting an experimental kiss on Charlotte’s shoulder. “It’s wonderful.”

Charlotte laughed, landing a returning peck on Hannah’s forehead. “I could, ah, I could say the same about you, y’know. N-Nu angel tech’s really come a long way.”

Hannah hummed and squeezed Charlotte’s hip, traced their fingers in small circles along her spine. Charlotte shivered.

“I-I’ve never…” She swallowed hard. “I’ve never… done this. B-before. N-not with anyone.”

“Neither have I,” Hannah said dryly.

“Y-yeah, but you’re… it’s not the same for humans. We, ah, we— _mmm_.”

Hannah found Charlotte’s throat, kissing along its column to her jaw. “Never mind that,” they murmured. “You are doing it now, Charlotte. With me.”

“With you,” Charlotte sighed. _With you, with you, and my heart’s beating like a racehorse._

It killed her to think of what might’ve happened if she hadn’t clung to Hannah at their first meeting—if she’d just let them leave like she had so many other Serviles. To think of all the ways Hannah could have been snatched from her if she hadn’t—

She seized up and pushed Hannah away, gentle but firm.  

“I-I-I _own_ you,” she said, the fact bitter in her mouth. “I—fuck, I b-bought you, I—I can’t—”

Hannah cocked their head against the pillow. “I do not see what that has to do with kissing me.”

“It’s _slavery_ , Hannah, i-it’s like I’m… th-the master-servant thing, the p-power dynamic, it’s…”

Hannah shook their head. “Do you see me as your slave?”

“No, o-of course not, but—”

“I do not see myself as your slave either. Nor do you treat me as such.” Hannah smiled, really and truly, and Charlotte knew they meant to do so. “You purchased me in name only, Charlotte. I am here because I want to be here. I am doing this—” they kissed Charlotte on the mouth “—because I want to do this. And I know I have that right because you treat me like a person. Like my own being. And with my entire being, Charlotte, I love you.”

Charlotte’s breath caught in her throat. She was floating, far and away from her body, bursting with light. She lunged forward, catching Hannah’s mouth in another kiss, this one deeper and longer than all the rest.

“I love you too,” she whispered.

 

“We didn’t give enough last month,” said the Man in the Wheelchair.

“No, we did not,” said the Vicious Man.

“We’re going to have to take more blood, Artifex,” said the Rotting Man.

“Only if you so desire, of course,” said the Man in the Suit.

Charlotte gave her right arm, let the Man in the Suit prick her fingers. She clenched her teeth to keep from wincing.

“Go on, Artifex.”

She placed her hand on the deteriorating sphere of solid Grace, watching the blood streak and feeling the heat bubble underneath her fingertips and begin to spread up her arm. The Grace vibrated beneath her hand, trembling and almost pushing back, pushing her away. Her blood rolled off its surface without being absorbed like it always had been before. Charlotte frowned—but before she could speak, the Surge began.

It started with a low whisper. Rising, rising into a cacophonous chorus of angelic voices, frequencies buzzing and shrieking in her ear. A joyous cheer as all the angels in Eden realized that the Artifex Deus had returned to them at last.

And it _hurt_.

The blazing heat of her body was an unbearable inferno, so unlike the many other times she had done this. Her guts were boiling, screaming with stabbing pains. Her head felt like it was splitting open, like the worst migraine she’d ever had amplified by ten. Soundwaves rippled through her, shaking her bones and piercing her eardrum. There were so many voices, _so many voices_ , and Charlotte found her mind reaching out for Hannah, _ohgodithurtssomuchpleasestop_ —

Charlotte yanked her hand away with a gasping sob. Her palm was bloody and raw, the focal point of the fading agony that spiked through her body.

The sphere was still incomplete.

 

———

 

Gabriel emerged from the quarantine and returned to Campbell’s building as quickly as possible so as not to arouse further suspicion. As he approached the lobby, however, he caught sight of two familiar figures exiting the elevator: Ruby, with Charlie on her arm.

Charlie looked different, and Gabriel’s heart sank as he realized why. Her skin was wan and waxy, her eyes manically bright. Her fingernails were blackened, like each one had been viciously bruised. She was listing towards Ruby, subtly curved around her, walking perfectly in step with the demon.

She met Gabriel’s gaze, and Ruby’s eye followed a half-second later. Ruby smiled toothily—Charlie only stared.

Ruby twined their fingers together and took off into the air, pulling Charlie along as they soared out of New River, in the direction of Eden. Dull, futile panic pulsed through Gabriel’s entire being like a full-body heartbeat. What was it Lucifer had said to Garth before he died? _Your mind is peaceful_. Well, it seemed Ruby had access to Charlie’s mind, now. Charlie’s mind, full of encyclopedic knowledge of the Grace coding that made up the border. Charlie’s mind, that knew how to weaken it.

He bolted into the elevator. There was no stopping Lucifer’s army now, but if he could find Sam, Charlotte, and Hannah, if he could somehow get them to the quarantine…

 Gabriel slipped into his camouflage state, stepped out of the elevator car nearly invisible. He wasn’t certain where Sam was being kept, but from what he had been able to glean from listening to the walls, most of the humans who were brought in passed through this floor—the one directly below his room. The corridors echoed with whimpers and screams. Names shouted through locked doors, the guttural mutterings of demons as they wrangled their prisoners.

 Gabriel searched the entire floor. Over the next three hours, he searched the entire building and even some of the neighbouring structures, putting his ear to every door and scouring every room he could. There was no sign of Sam, of his mother and her Servile. In fact, there were very few people _or_ demons in the building—the noises he heard were only coming from a scant handful of rooms. Hell, he couldn’t even find Lucifer or Campbell.

Defeated, Gabriel made his way to the lobby once more, still camouflaged. His options, playing over and over in his mind on a terrible loop, had him frozen. Did he run? Did he return to the quarantine? Did he go for Eden?

Did it matter at all which he chose?

Over the hills, over the trees, and two hours to the west, there was a thunderous cracking. A cry let out—everyone still on the streets, human, demon, and monster alike, stopped in their tracks, all eyes turning to the sky.

The border, all faint distortion on the horizon, shuddered massively. The ground quaked. Gabriel knew the signs of a Breach better than anyone—and he knew with horrible certainty that Ruby and Charlie had just triggered one.

 

———

 

The quake shook the tower. Charlotte grabbed the edge of the Grace’s pedestal, trying desperately not to vomit as she realized what must’ve caused the tremor.

The Rotting Man spat a gob of blood-flecked phlegm at his feet. “Already?”

“Don’t be stupid,” snapped the Vicious Man. “It isn’t yet twilight, we have time.”

“It’s a Breach,” said the Man in the Suit. “Mr. Keir, would you please assist Raphael with deploying the troops?”

The Vicious Man grinned. “Of course, Mr. Cameron. With pleasure.”

He left, and the room stopped trembling shortly thereafter. Charlotte straightened, took a step back from the Grace sphere. The three remaining chairs stepped and rolled forward in response.

“You must complete the offering, Ms. Shurley,” said the Man in the Suit.

“Yes, _yes_.” The Rotting Man half-rounded the pedestal, reaching scabbed and crusted fingers towards Charlotte. “You must do it _now_.”

Charlotte cradled her burnt and bleeding hand, raw from gripping metal. She shook her head. “No! No, I can’t, I—I-I’m not going back to that, I—”

“We’ve already left it too late!” the Rotting Man wailed. “If you don’t do it now, you’ll doom us all!”

She paused. “To _what_?” There were biofuel converters and reserves built into almost every Grace-powered entity in Eden. That would last them all until the chairs found another blood bag. “I-I know, I _know_ it’s not supposed t-to hurt that much, something’s wrong.”

 

———

 

Something was wrong.

Gabriel could feel it—he could almost taste it, a note like the dusty cold-sweet of iron on the tip of his tongue. It wasn’t the Breach, not quite. It almost felt like the first time Gabriel had encountered Jax—sick and deeply unsettling, something off about the very air around him. The worst part was, it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. For the first time in over a century, Gabriel stood on the brink of an apocalypse.

 _Oh, fuck me_.

A flock of what looked like birds burst upwards on the horizon and sped towards the broken border. From this distance it was difficult to make out exactly what they were, but Gabriel knew what they had to be. More importantly, he knew where Lucifer and Sam had to be.

He ran. He sped to the carport by the lobby, where two of the old Pre-Fall vehicles remained alone and untouched—a van, and Dean’s classic model. Gabriel got into the latter, the heavily-warded black beauty with the chrome accents. The keys hung in the ignition. Gabriel thanked his lucky stars that Charlotte had had the foresight to give him and his brothers driving lessons, and in the space of a breath he was pulling out of the port.

He sped through the buildings, nearly ploughing through a line of demons and actually ploughing through a couple of mutants. Shrieks and the sounds of projectile attacks sounded after him. The warding kept most of them at bay, but Gabriel didn’t dare slow down.

A _thunk_ on the roof and a sizzling noise like burning bacon told him he was right to do so. He swerved, trying to buck the demon off, but they clung on, screaming all the while. Sharp turn—the demon fell, but not all the way, clinging to the side of the car and pressing a twisted grimace to the glass of the passenger-side window. They cracked a hole in the glass with two head-butts, face bubbling and red-raw with the force of the wards. The demon reached in through the hole, and Gabriel grabbed and yanked them closer, flesh dragging and tearing on the broken glass. He snatched a fistful of hair and slammed their face into the warded shards, once and again until nothing but bloody pulp dripped from the framework of their skull. When he shoved them out, this time they fell completely.

And with that, Gabriel passed through the wall and onto the road to Eden.

He tried not to think of those he had left behind in the quarantine. He couldn’t spare a thought for them now, not when Sam was heading into Eden alongside an army of demons. Not when his mother was either dead or enslaved. It turned out he didn’t have a choice after all, he thought with a grim smile—in the end ( _and this may very well be the end_ ) he was theirs, the rest of the world be damned.

 

———

 

“Oh, just get _on with it_ ,” moaned the Man in the Wheelchair. He gestured for his Servile to bring him around the pedestal, cornering Charlotte between himself and the Rotting Man on the other side. “What’s a few moments of pain, girl? Here—” His grip was tight on her wrist, surprisingly so considering his apparent frailty.

Charlotte, nevertheless, managed to wrest herself free. “I-It doesn’t _want_ me, l-look, _look_ , it didn’t take my blood!”

 There weren’t even smears left on the Grace now. Her blood pooled on the pedestal, and the Rotting Man shuddered at the sight.

“She’s right, oh, Zikam—”

“Quiet.” The Man in the Suit adjusted his cuffs and lifted his chin. “We knew all along that this was a possibility. Ms. Shurley,” he said, giving her a stiff bow, “we thank you for your years of loyal service. But I am afraid you are no longer of any use to us.”

Terror had Charlotte in a vice grip as the weight of his words sank in. The Rotting Man let out an inhuman shriek and fell upon her, tearing and biting on their way to the floor. This close he stank of decay, of old blood and sweat and human shit. Charlotte gagged and kicked at his gut. He heaved, coughed spittle in her face. She took the moment of opportunity to claw at his eyes and roll in the opposite direction, scrambling to her feet. She shoved past the Man in the Wheelchair and his Servile and stumbled to the door, fumbled with the touchpad—only to realize that she wasn’t being followed.

The three chairs stood huddled around the Grace, watching its flickering light.

“Too much, too much,” said the Man in the Wheelchair. “We should have stopped her, Zikam. We’ll lose our hold completely, come nightfall.”

“But that’s what you _wanted_ , wasn’t it?” The Rotting Man snarled. Blood and pus from ruptured sores was leaking down his face. “You just wanted to _toy_ with this world, you care nothing for our power.”

The Man in the Suit shrugged lightly. “Think what you like, Shathis. Shall we hold the tower ‘til they come?”

“U-until _who_ comes?” Charlotte asked.

The Man in the Suit turned to her and almost smiled. “A great many things, Ms. Shurley. Including whatever just made it through that Breach. I suggest you go on back to your apartment and prepare for the worst. Don’t worry—we have some hours to go, yet.”

The Rotting Man spat in her direction again.

Charlotte stepped out of the room in a daze, reeling and unsure what to do. She made her way back up to the penthouse, where Hannah was waiting at the door.

“I thought I heard you call,” they said, taking Charlotte into their arms. “What happened? Are you all right?”

“N-not really,” she said, relishing Hannah’s warmth. “And I think it’s about to get worse.”


	21. The Rift

The black car burst through the treeline, and Gabriel brought it to a grinding halt in the scrubland just a few meters east of the border. The crack rose thirty feet off the ground, a jagged, yonic opening bleeding Grace and whistling air. There were no signs of any demons. Gabriel gripped the steering wheel tight, took a moment to brace himself. There would be no turning back, there would be no peaceful return to normalcy. All he could hope for was a glorious last hurrah.

It almost felt like the wind carried him over.

 

———

 

Sunset came like it did every day. Blazing across the sky, dyeing the clouds with blues and purples, bright and gorgeous and so very like the evening that Lucifer came to New River. Charlotte shuddered at the thought and watched through the penthouse window as a clot of black appeared over the city skyline.

“He’s here,” she whispered. She had no idea how Lucifer had managed to make it over the border, but she supposed that didn’t matter now.

The clot grew larger, more clearly composed. It became a flock of birds, next a flock of angels, and finally the horde of demons it truly was, whooping war cries with limp humans in their arms. Chasing after them was a host of Gadreels, caught in a scattering of skirmishes at the edges of the swarm. Bolts of energy and light came shooting down, lightning out of a living stormcloud, striking billboards and the roofs of buildings. The sound of crumbling infrastructure and the screams of the populace echoed through the city.

 “Charlotte, we need to get out of here!”

She didn’t turn. She couldn’t. She was petrified, unable to tear her eyes away from the chaos unfolding before her or so much as step back from the window. Hannah grabbed her arm.

“ _Charlotte_ , please! You know they’ll come for the tower soon, we _must_ leave.”

Charlotte mouthed dumbly around an answer. Cleared her throat, spoke in a thick rasp. “I-I let it happen again, it’s happening again, I-I-I-I—”

Hannah squeezed her bicep. “Don’t. There’s nothing to be done about it now, Charlotte. All we can do now is try to survive it.”

The demons were landing, lighting on unbroken roofs and in the streets. Pulses of _heat_ , of some massive force shook the windows and the walls, emanating from each individual confrontation. Violent scatterings of detritus shrapnel sprayed out of black-blue eruptions between buildings. Twin figures flew, hand in hand, towards the tower.

Lucifer and Sam.

 _There’s nothing to be done about it now_.

Charlotte closed her eyes.

 

_It hurts to see how they hate her. They’ll lie if she asks, but she knows they hate her. And she knows she deserves it for letting things get this far._

_“Gabriel…”_

_He turns away from the sound of her voice. “Don’t. You don’t need to justify yourself to us.”_

_“I-I would’ve, I would’ve done something,” she whispers. “I-If I had kn-known what to do. I would’ve stopped them from going off like that, but—”_

_“But there was nothing to be done.” Raphael’s tone is even, smooth. Untouchable. “We’re waiting on your go-ahead, mother. Shall we raise the border now?”_

_Charlotte looks at her children, silently begging them to meet her eye. They don’t listen. “Yes.”_

_Then—_

_Blast._

 

“Charlotte, _please_.”

She blinked, startled as if snapped awake. The horror coiling in her gut spooled out hot into a deep and sudden fury.

“No,” she muttered. “Yeah, no, that’s not all we can do.”

 

The tower shook violently again as Charlotte and Hannah returned to the Grace room. They clung to the wall, crouching down to avoid being bowled over. The tremor ended almost as soon as it began.

“Have they hit the tower, do you think?” Hannah wondered.

Charlotte shook her head. “I-I don’t know. Maybe.” But she didn’t think so. Somehow, she knew the quake was unrelated to the attack.

They burst into the room a moment later to find the four chairs once more congregated around the Grace. All four looked up as the door slid shut. Their faces—Charlotte couldn’t focus on any of their faces. The features were vague, unreal, like figures in a dream: conglomerates of friends and acquaintances and passing strangers, doughy nothings that inform only your peripheral vision of their basic identity. A thought came unbidden— _they’re coming out of their shapes_. Charlotte wasn’t sure what that meant, but she knew it was true.

“What have you come for now, Ms. Shurley?” The Man in the Suit looked nothing like himself, but his voice sounded exactly the same. 

“Y-you said more was coming,” she said. She took a step forward, her hands trembling at her sides. “Y-you said… you said you would lose your p-power when dusk fell.” She curled her hands into fists. Outside, another explosion rang out. “A-after all this… for _fuck’s sake_ , you o-owe me a goddamn explanation!”

The chairs paused, then laughed—an eerie, pealing sound.

The Man in the Wheelchair, easily identifiable even in his shifting state, spoke next. “She has us, I think. And why not? Eh, Bakhe, even _you_ must agree—we’re finished here.”

“I do, and we are,” the Vicious Man chuckled. “Tell her, Zikam.”

The Man in the Suit shook his head. “Here—it will be easier if I show you, Ms. Shurley. You and your Servile, too.”

He brought out another marble. This one was black streaked with gleaming stripes of opalescence. He placed it in Charlotte’s hand, reached for Hannah’s wrist and placed their palm over the marble. Hannah twined their fingers with Charlotte’s, ensuring the marble stayed trapped.   

“Don’t let go,” said the Man.

 

———

 

Gabriel hit the city just as a chunk of wall came flying towards the highway. He skidded out of the way just in time, but the windshield and windows still wound up pelted with debris.

 _Fuck_. The city was in complete chaos. Demons and their Jax-linked humans tore into Gadreels and Eden locals alike, fires raged in buildings and explosive projectiles shredded those untouched. Blaster and gunfire, blades and electric discharges—the atmosphere crackled with destructive power. Overhead, demons and angels swooped, dive-bombing and grappling each other in the air.

Gabriel pulled the car into a darkened alley. He leapt out, broke the lock on the trunk and popped it open, and grinned at the sight of the weapons cache he’d been hoping to find. It wasn’t too much—just a single quarterstaff, two handblasters, a shotgun, and a couple boxes of shells—but it was more than enough for one person. Gabriel grabbed the quarterstaff and a handblaster and shut the trunk. He crept to the edge of the alley, slipping back into camouflage as he observed the carnage before him.

Most of the local humans could be distinguished not only by their fashionable dress, but by their vacant expressions. Those who were Under milled about like stoned cats, blinking stupidly as they were either killed or corralled by one side or the other. The Gadreels were trying to get everyone in vehicles or at least running towards the city limits—the demons were forcing them deeper within the streetscape, out of sight.

Those who weren’t Under, however—they fought. They had makeshift weapons in hand, they barricaded themselves in buildings, they screamed at their Serviles and Personals and bodyguard Militaries to protect them. Their bodies littered the streets.

Gabriel darted out of the alley and across the wide thoroughfare, ducking inside what looked like a café. There were two human corpses inside, and one twitching Servile partially crushed beneath a fallen beam. The Servile was clearly still on, its eyes bulging wide as it clawed desperately at the site of its bisection. It squawked on a crackling loop, “Assistance re-re-re-re-re-re—Assistance re-re-re-re…” 

Gabriel stopped in his tracks, considered the merits of helping the angel when he couldn’t do anything to actually repair it. 

“Assistance—”

A blast shook the building. Gabriel dove out of the way as something massive crashed through the café’s windows. Two bodies, a Gadreel and a demon, locked together and firing close ranged attacks—they landed on top of the beam, flattening the poor Servile completely. They rolled until the demon had the Gadreel pinned, and a beam of sickly, yellowish light descended from its Third Eye, scalding the Gadreel’s face down to the wirework. The demon cackled and, once it was satisfied that the Military wasn’t going to get up with it, rose to its feet.

Gabriel remained flat on the floor. The demon peered over its shoulder, and a moment later a woman picked her way over the broken glass to stand beside it. She had the same waxy, blackened look as Charlie, and she held a large hunting knife in one trembling hand. She and the demon shared a prolonged look, her expression oscillating between fear and deep, painful misery. Her robotic parasite smiled coyly, cupped a hand beneath her chin.

Gabriel scooted an inch forward on his belly, and glass from the broken window clinked in the wake of his shifting leg. The demon turned its head sharply, eyes falling on the uncamouflaged quarterstaff lying on the floor.

 _Oh, fuckballs_.

The demon let out a terrible, triumphant shriek, and lunged forward. Gabriel gripped the quarterstaff, clicked the blade release as he swung it around and plunged the blade deep into the demon’s chest. It shuddered, its hands falling to its sides. It glared, bared startlingly white teeth, and flailed against the quarterstaff, spitting curses.

Gabriel struggled to his feet, keeping the demon at arm’s length. He twisted the blade, carving through what he knew were essential wires, and thrust it upwards. The demon screamed and went limp. 

Gabriel leveraged the quarterstaff out of his kill with a boot on the decommissioned ‘bot’s chest, only to look up and see that the woman had collapsed on the teal laminate floor.

He wiped the bloody blade on his pant leg as he walked over to her. There was no blood on her body, no sign of any wound, but she was unmistakably dead.

Making a mental note to try not to kill Ruby, Gabriel clicked the quarterstaff closed again and stepped over the corpse.

 

———

 

 _Don’t let go_.

The world dissolved, and another grew in its place. Charlotte and Hannah stood before a marble tower choked by morning glory. Four beings waited at the base; each wore a robe, one yellow, one green, one red, one purple, and their faces were wrapped in gauze, showing nothing but their bright, gleaming teeth.

Then all six of them were inside a small hall whose walls were covered in multicoloured velvet hangings. The beings prostrated themselves before a great, scaled creature with two heads atop snakelike necks. Both of its faces seemed to be made of white porcelain, cherubic like baby dolls, save for that the left’s eyes and the right’s mouth had been sewn shut with black thread.

The left head spoke. “We know why you have come, and what you wish to ask.”

“Then tell us,” said the red-robed figure.

The left head let out a musical sigh. “It cannot be done by you, and it cannot be done in this realm. To manipulate the Qin is to bind your body to creation, to give of your heart willingly, to offer up your very mind in the name of rejuvenation. It is to sacrifice your mortality—and you have none to give. It is not a magic meant for our kind.”

“But there are mortals _here_ ,” said the green-robed figure. “Could we—”

“There are,” said the left head, “and you cannot. Their blood has its own magic—the Qin would decay at its touch, rot away into something contagious and consuming. And you would gain nothing.”

The yellow-robed figure turned to the red, snapping, “Well, wasn’t this a waste of time.”

The red held out a hand to its detractor—the hand was grey and leathery, with dry-scaled wrists and long fingers tipped with yellowish nails. “We accept your judgment, Oracle. But pray, where _can_ we take it?”

The creature—the Oracle—squirmed, and the left head smiled.

But the scene ended before it could answer. The hall dissolved and reformed into a dark room with grim stone walls. The four robed creatures stood around the smooth, glowing orb of Grace that Charlotte knew so intimately well. Purple, yellow, and green cradled it in their arms, caressing and cooing as if at a small child. Red stood before them, doubled over and breathing hard. Behind it was a thin crack of light hovering unanchored in the air.

“The Guardians…” Red panted, then laughed. “The Guardians saw my true face. It did nothing to them.”

The being shifted, and Charlotte saw that its robe and facial wrappings were stained with something dark and thick, dripping in mucky gobs. It collapsed, and the purple released its hold on the orb to catch its companion.

“But you did it, Zikam,” the purple whispered. “You walked into the world of the dead and walked out with their most sacred treasure. You did it, you did it…”

White. Then four forms, monstrous and amorphous, with the Grace suspended above them, creating blue-white halos around the shifting matter of their defiant bodies. They carved a path through crowds of scuttling, squawking creatures. They passed through a maze of stone tunnels, wet walls crawling with humanoid figures. All those they passed were covering their eyes—all the living, anyway. The dead sported smoking, bloody, uncovered holes.

The four forms came to the end of the tunnels. They arrived in a room with no fixed size, sprawling into a blackness so absolute that stepping into it seemed like stepping into an absence of space. An old, fat woman with skin almost as deeply black as the room itself sat in the middle. In front of her was a pile of mismatched teeth. Out of the pile grew a sapling, drooping with round, golden fruit. The woman plucked a tooth between her thumb and middle finger and popped it into her mouth, and chewed.

“That’ll die soon,” she said, gesturing to the Grace. “‘Less you tend it.”

“We will, Mother,” said the forms in echoing unison. “Please, let us pass.”

“Go by your own channels, why don’t you? You have them for a reason—so you don’t bother _me_.” The woman ate another tooth.

“Our channels are being watched, Mother. The Guardians are angry.”

She scoffed. “They’re always angry with you petty gods.”

“Please.” The forms shifted, and a scatter of fresh teeth, still bloody, fell before the old woman.

She grinned. “Very well.”

She picked a fruit, and split it between her own white incisors. Behind her, the dark yawned open to reveal a bloom of blinding light, like a—Charlotte smiled. Her mother would’ve said _like a Georgia O’Keefe_.

The four forms stepped forward, over the old Tootheater, and through the opening.

On the other side, the four Equin chairs stood on a bed of flattish rocks exposed by low tide. A set of concrete stairs loomed before them, and above it the curve of a city seawall.

Something snatched the marble from Charlotte and Hannah’s clasped hands, and they were back in the Grace room, staggering at the jolting transition like drunks.

“You were not the only artist to whom we sent a vision of the Grace,” said Zikam, the Man in the Suit. “But you were the only one who remembered it when you woke. The Grace—the Qinstone—took to you. It wanted to breathe life into your creations. And you remade this world together.”

Hannah straightened first. They helped Charlotte stay balanced, and fixed the four chairs with a deadly sharp eye.

“Petty gods,” they said. “You truly are petty if you orchestrated all of this for—for what? A century of control over a world you helped destroy?”

Shathis, the Rotting Man, let out a ragged, bronchital retch. “For the _Qin_ , you stupid shell. We were born of this world; these people birthed us from their nightmares long ago. It’s _ours_ , until it dies.”

“But the Servile is right. It is not ours to rule,” Zikam said. “Not anymore.”

The Man in the Wheelchair laughed. “Until it dies… Feh, it will die soon. The Qin and the Jax will eat through the rest of it, and we will be free.”

“Free to try again,” Bakhe, the Violent Man, said. His many shifting faces split into a fanged, toothless, twisted, straight-edged grin. “In another world, another time. We will get it right, and keep the power. Now that we have the Qin, we can keep going… going… until there are no worlds left to burn.”

Charlotte was hyper-aware of Hannah’s hands on her body. The remembrance of their lips on hers, on her throat, trembled over her skin like a pleasant chill. Further back, she saw Gabriel awakening on the other side of the border, his throat patched and his voice raw. Her four sons in a row, coming online for the first time, blinking at the bright new world, learning to breathe in her backyard, learning to speak in her den. Mama, tracing sweet, tickling circles on her daughter’s arm, calling her a heartbreaker. Daddy and Omar, squishing her between them in a bear hug. And the top of a sheer-drop waterslide, yellow plastic depths plunging below her toes—

She lunged out of Hannah’s grasp.

 

———

 

Lucifer stood on the steps of a great stone building, flanked by columns. He had his arms outstretched, barking orders at the demons and their vessels that lighted in the building’s courtyard. Gabriel watched from behind a totaled car as the troops dove down, and then peeled out again in shrieking droves. They swooped like vicious birds, stopping only long enough to hear the words of their leader. The vessels looked dazed and ill as they clung to their parasites for dear life.

Finally, traffic seemed to die down. Lucifer reclined on the steps, smiling up at the ‘bot-peppered sky. Gabriel scurried to the next-closest cover—a pile of rubble that looked like it had once been a brick wall. The sounds of the battle were loud enough that he might be able to get all the way to Lucifer if he stayed low and quiet, and then—

Sam stepped out from behind a column.

He sat next to Lucifer, his legs folded against his chest. His face was pale and grey, covered in a fine sheen of sweat. His fingernails were black. Lucifer reached out to him, caressed his cheek with a soft smile.

“This is all you, sweetheart,” he said, just loud enough for Gabriel to hear from his hiding place. “And this is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

Gabriel tightened his grip on the quarterstaff.

 

———

 

Charlotte had the ball of Grace—of Qinstone—of whatever—in her hands before the four gods could react. She raised it over her head as she backed away from their scrabbling hands, grinning wildly at the sudden mania in all their many faces.

“You’re not taking this anywhere,” she said, and with all her strength she shattered the Grace on the floor.

What happened next brought them all to their knees.

 

———

 

The shriek came from nowhere and permeated everything. Gabriel’s head felt like it was splitting in two. He collapsed, the world jittering into black-tinged fog before him. The note was sustained, impossibly high-pitched, throbbing like a wound.

He realized, from somewhere far away and empty, that it was the screams of the Eden angels.

As he struggled to his knees, he also realized that there was a gaping crack in the sky.  

It yawned an electric blue-black, rimmed by opalescent rivulets snaking through the firmament like veins in a stone. Gabriel watched, transfixed, as a shimmering mass trickled from the crack and took the form of a spidery hand.

The screams faded, and the hand fragmented into five spindly beams that drove themselves into the city like spikes. The earth shook, and Gabriel lost his balance again, this time gripping the brick detritus for support. He looked up—the spikes pulsed, lumps of _something_ being forced out of the sky and down, down into the city below.

 _What. The. Hell_.

Certain that nothing, absolutely nothing could faze him now, Gabriel somehow made it to his feet. Lucifer and Sam were shaking too, uncurling from whatever protective position they’d taken. Gabriel dropped his camouflage.

Lucifer stared at him, expression awash in genuine shock for a moment before he managed to compose himself. “Gabriel! So, you made it over, little brother?”

Gabriel could only glare. He turned his attentions to Sam, gaze softening as he looked the young man over. Sam seemed unharmed save for the sickly effects of binding himself to Lucifer. Gabriel tried to catch his eye, but Sam was staring unblinking at the rift in the sky. _Baby, please look at me. I need you to see me_.

Lucifer laughed. “Don’t bother, Gabriel. He’s mine. He gave in almost as soon as you left, you know. All I had to do was tell him what I would do to you… to _everyone_ … if he kept denying me.” He patted Sam’s arm. “That’s the great and terrible thing about living in this wretched world, wouldn’t you agree? No matter how well you argue your side, love trumps reason every time.”

Sam shuddered. He lowered his gaze. Gabriel suppressed a smile—beneath the glaze of the link, there remained a glint of steel. He focused on the feel of the handblaster he’d stuffed down the back of his pants. His fingers twitched.

“I won’t ask you to join me,” Lucifer said. “But from the look of things…” All three of them turned to the five beams of pulsing light and the crack above them. More screams—demonic and human too, this time—pealed over the shattered skyline. Lucifer sighed. “Well, it looks like we might want to put aside our differences for a few hours.”

A thud. Something massive came barreling through the streets, then divided—a teeming mass of creatures the size of weasels, with too many teeth and not enough eyes. They moved in tandem until they surrounded the courtyard of the stone building, forcing Lucifer, Gabriel, and Sam against the steps. The things yowled and spat like cats, and Gabriel had no doubt that despite their small size, they could strip a human to the bone or an angel to the wire with little effort.

Gabriel popped the quarterstaff’s blade. Then he reached for Sam. Lucifer shot a glare at him as he did so, but Gabriel just glared back, tugging the handblaster out of his pants and pressing it into Sam’s palm.

“Thanks,” Sam said, then swore. “It’s only half-charged, _shit_.” 

“I’ll protect you,” Lucifer said. His voice was smooth velvet, and Gabriel rolled his eyes.

Out of Lucifer’s sight, Sam squeezed Gabriel’s hand. Just once, and weakly, and his skin was ice cold. Gabriel met his eye. Sam smiled and cocked the handblaster.

The creatures descended in a flurry of claws and teeth.

 

———

 

“ _What have you done?_ ”

The screams of the four chairs merged with the agonized wails of the angels and demons outside. Charlotte and Hannah lay curled on the floor, hands over their ears as waves of pain wracked their bodies. Charlotte thought she might vomit.

Then the noise subsided. The chaotic sounds of battle resumed, but the screams died, and the room—

The room was dead silent.

Charlotte opened her eyes. Shards of Qinstone were scattered about her like broken glass. They pulsed with dull colour, some of them already winked out to a faded, lichen-like grey-blue. She sat up—Hannah was struggling to their feet, but the Equin chairs were nowhere to be seen. Instead, a thin, smoking crack of light had appeared on the wall, and on the floor in front of it sat an empty wheelchair, a collapsed, blind Servile, and four discarded suits.

Charlotte laughed, disbelieving. She turned to Hannah, who was standing and staring at the crack.

“I… I think w-we just won,” Charlotte said, and laughed again. “Oh my _god_ , Hannah, th-they’re gone!”

Hannah smiled, but they didn’t look at Charlotte. Instead they reached towards the crack of light, running a finger along the whitish seam of it. The light grew stronger, more golden around their finger, and this glow followed the wayward digit as it moved. After a moment’s pause, Hannah slipped their finger inside.

Charlotte stood then, and rushed to Hannah’s side. “Wh-what the hell? Don’t—”

“It’s cool,” Hannah said. Their voice was far-away and dreamlike. “But also… warm.”

“Weird,” Charlotte said flatly. “Let’s g-go, Hannah, we sh-shouldn’t stay here.”

“No…” Hannah pulled their finger back. It shone pinkish and gold, as if it were lit from within. A few seconds later, it faded back to its normal colour. “Charlotte, I think we should go through.”

“Go… go _through_?”

“We can open it further, I’m sure of it!”

Charlotte took Hannah gently by the shoulders and turned them, placing herself between her angel and the light. “D-don’t you see what happened here? The ch-chairs went through that th-thing—just l-like the one in the vision. W-we’re not touching it with a ten f-foot fucking pole.”

Hannah shook their head. “I surmised as much myself. But wherever the Equin Chairs have gone, it’s beyond that light, somehow. I can—” They froze, and blinked. “I can feel it. There is no logical reason why I should do so, and it’s not quite an emotion. I feel it… physically. Like a creature in my breast, or an extra piece of circuitry. There is something grand and powerful and deeply good here, Charlotte, I can almost see it, please, I have to—”

“Hey, hey.” Charlotte took Hannah’s face in her hands. “Look, i-if you wanna come back after all this is over, we can d-do that. We’ll investigate, w-we can do tests, we’ll do whatever you w-want. Just… please, d-don’t go through until w-we _know_ it’s safe.”

The angel slumped their shoulders. “You don’t believe me?”

“I d-do. But I don’t wanna lose you to some interdimensional g-gateway, not in the m-middle of all this.” Charlotte smiled. “Not ever.”

Hannah relaxed, and made a face that seemed somewhere close to serene. They leaned in and kissed Charlotte, soft and sweet as butter.

“You won’t lose me,” they said. “And you’re right. We should find someplace safe for now, somewhere Lucifer won’t think to look for us.”

Charlotte scoffed. “K-kinda tough to do that. We st-step outside, we’re sitting ducks, and there’re only so m-many places to hide in this tower.”

They settled at last on regrouping in the offices of the four chairs. The level was oddly bare, and clinically white, almost to the point of hurting Charlotte’s eyes. Each office was made up the way a child would conceive it—with a single desk, a filing cabinet against one wall and a nearly empty bookshelf against the other, and a few unremarkable landscapes hanging dispassionately on the pristine walls. The only room with any distinction to it was The Man in the Wheelchair’s, who had a higher desk designed to accommodate his chair.

Hannah explored the offices further as Charlotte investigated “break room”, which consisted of a sparse room with nothing but a white sectional set inside, and a poorly stocked kitchenette that looked like it had never been used. The cooler wasn’t even turned on. The pantry cupboard was empty save for a single jar of peanut butter and an unopened box of saltine crackers.

Charlotte brought the meager foodstuffs to Hannah, who was staring out the window of one of the offices.

“S-someone’s been at this peanut butter,” she said, half-laughing. “I w-wonder which one of them—uh, hey, what’re you staring at?”

Hannah pointed wordlessly upwards. Charlotte put the food on the desk and crept to the sill, and felt her stomach drop.

There was a crack in the sky, and beams reaching down, and as her gaze followed them to the ground she saw masses of small black creatures ravaging the remnants of the city.

Without any proof, she knew, somehow, that this was because she’d shattered the Grace. Without any hesitation, she grabbed Hannah’s arm.

“Wh-what _have_ I done?” she whispered.

 

———

 

Gabriel was surprised by the ease with which he, Sam, and Lucifer were able to fight in concert. Sam got off as many shots as he could but eventually the handblaster ran out of juice, and he resorted to using it as a blunt weapon. Gabriel could honestly say he had never been prouder than when he watched Sam bash in the skull of a rampaging weasel demon with the butt of his gun.

But the waves kept coming, and Gabriel didn’t know how much longer they could last.

He ran one of the things through and Lucifer blasted two more that were lunging for his head. Sam stomped on the throat of one and punted another, and Gabriel let out a wheeze that wanted to be a laugh as the little monster went flying with a squeal.

Lucifer was their powerhouse at the moment, and cut through swathes of beasties with overhead projectiles. He had his blade out, too, and was skewering as many of the creatures as he was incinerating. Gabriel had to admit to being impressed. His brother might’ve been falling apart, but he certainly hadn’t lost his edge.

A second of misdirection was all it took, in the end. 

A pair of the monsters, crawling in tandem, feinted left and lunged right, and Gabriel was a half-moment too slow to catch the switch. They attacked his legs, and while he was able to kick them away and kill them with little effort, the act had him staggering away from Lucifer and Sam. Then came another wave, pushing him into the farthest column and keeping him cornered there. He sustained more scratches and bites, but quickly fell back into his groove.

It wasn’t an ideal position, but it would’ve been fine. It should’ve been fine.

Then he saw it.

From within the depths of the mass of creatures winked a single, milky eye. Gabriel fought down a couple of steps to look closer. Lurking in the swarm was a larger shape, slithering low to the ground. It was the same colour and texture as the smaller beasts, and was very well disguised, but once Gabriel saw it, its presence became terrifyingly obvious.

As did the fact that it was making its way to the front of the crowd.

Gabriel waved his arms at Sam and Lucifer, but they were too occupied to notice. He wasn’t sure they’d even noticed he’d left their side. The creatures had managed to push them farther back as well, and they were almost surrounded. And the larger thing was getting closer.

Gabriel tried to scream, but all that came out was a reedy whistle. He readied his quarterstaff to fire, but switching modes from blade to blaster made it harder for him to fight off the ferrety fucks at his feet, and he had to leap behind the column to keep from being overwhelmed.

When he came back around, the large thing was rearing its head. It was massive, and snakelike, and covered in patches of scales and fur. When it opened its mouth it exposed rows upon rows of curving fangs, dripping with saliva and venom. It seemed to move in slow motion, but no—it lunged before Sam and Lucifer could react, before Gabriel could pull the trigger.

And it closed its toothy maw around Lucifer’s middle.

The thing slammed and pinned Lucifer to the front door of the building. Its fangs were buried in his flesh—his legs were kicking spasmodically, his head lolling on his shoulder as his wounds leaked blood and black.

With another silent scream, Gabriel fired on the monster and its head disintegrated in a spray of teeth and meat.

At the loss of their apparent leader, the weasels retreated. They ran back into the streets en masse, leaving the courtyard and steps littered with corpses. With the fading of their wailing screams, the whole area fell into an almost preternatural silence. Gabriel’s ears rang as he made his way to the body by the door.

Lucifer was gone. The fangs had perforated essential parts of him, and when Gabriel got close enough he could see that the venom was bubbling and fizzing at the puncture points. What was left of Lucifer was starting to disintegrate. Gabriel could’ve gagged, if he’d had the reflex. His body didn’t even have the decency to let him feel sad at the loss—instead he crawled with distant relief. There lay his torturer. There lay the reason the world had fallen apart, the reason Eden was falling now, and the reason Gabriel hadn’t been able to warn the goddamn reason to duck.

 

_“Gabriel, are we brothers?”_

_The two archangels sat on Charlotte’s back porch, fenced off from the world and hidden in a small, tangled forest of a garden. They’d been awake—alive?—for two months._

_Gabriel turned the question over in his head. Thinking was an interesting sensation, and he liked it. The processing whirr made him tingle inside, and he felt very clever for being able to conjure the sensation._

_“I am not sure,” he said. “We were created by the same person, and we are being raised together. However, we were not born. Can we be brothers if we were not born?”_

_Lucifer looked as if he were thinking, too. “I do not know. We call our creator Mother, though, so perhaps it does not matter.”  Lucifer raised the corners of his mouth into a delighted crescent._

_Gabriel liked doing that too, so he smiled back._

_“I think we must be brothers, Gabriel,” Lucifer said. “I think we must, because I think… I feel that we are.”_

_Gabriel nodded. “I feel that too.”_

Gabriel choked on a silent sob. 

He stayed a moment more by Lucifer’s side, until he realized that Sam had yet to join him. In the same split second, he remembered the dead vessel in the café, and his mind went numb.

Sam lay on the steps. When Gabriel reached him he saw that his head had fallen back and his eyes were open and glassy. Gabriel gathered him into his arms, shock devolving his thoughts into an endless litany of _no no no no please Sam please come back to me please no_ —

The waxy, sick look of the Jax possession had leached from Sam’s face. He could’ve been playing dead but for the fact that his pulse was gone. Gabriel buried his face in the crook of Sam’s neck, pressing dry kisses to his cold throat and searching fruitlessly for a sign of a heartbeat.

_—no no Sam no please no no Sam please no—_

He couldn’t stop looking for proof that Sam was somehow alive, for the impossible evidence he knew he wouldn’t find. His mind was overwhelmed by disbelief, by grief, by a complete and utter inability to process the fact that Sam Winchester was dead in his arms. His brain split in two competing directions, and he couldn’t comprehend either one. For the first time in a long time, Gabriel felt truly broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE NOTE THAT I'VE TAGGED MINOR CHARACTER DEATH ONLY FOR A REASON!! This is miserable and I know it sucks to leave you here while I finish up the last couple of chapters, but I promise, there WILL be a happy ending to this story! No spoilers, but this is Supernatural fic, after all - death is never goodbye.


	22. Into the Dark

The demons stopped when Lucifer died. Those that could detach themselves from the fighting fled with their vessels, and those that could not tried to encourage their human prisoners to help them. Few did, and soon there were nothing but corpses in the street, the survivors having barricaded themselves indoors. The monsters from the sky prowled through the rubble, sniffing and scrabbling and nibbling at deceased organics. They seemed utterly uninterested in going after the hidden, but when the occasional stray human ran by them, they swarmed.

Gabriel picked them off as he made his way towards the tower. He had Sam’s body slung over his shoulders—one hand was dedicated to keeping Sam in place, the other to shooting weasel demons with the quarterstaff, which thankfully showed little signs of running out of charge anytime soon. The creatures tried to scamper out of range of his weapon, but otherwise didn’t react to him at all. He could’ve almost called it luck.

And then he reached the tower.

A swarm of weasels had gathered at the base of the building, scrabbling at the closed doors, trying to climb the walls. Another one of the strange, snakelike creatures had wound itself around the tower and was peering through the windows. Gabriel stared at the spectacle before him with numb pragmatism. It would be foolish to go forward. While the creatures in the streets were by and large ignoring him, these ones looked a great deal angrier. Gabriel checked the quarterstaff—by his estimation, he had about two shots left, and then he was stuck with the bladed edge. He was carrying literal dead weight, his most powerful weapons were disabled, and even if he managed to get in the building, there was very little chance that he would make it back out.

Gabriel sank to the ground, leaning against a ruined wall. He brought Sam into his lap and brushed the hair out of his eyes, running a tender thumb across his forehead.

_Sam is dead. Mom must be in the tower. I need to take Sam to the tower._ The thoughts cycled through his head on a loop, the only anchoring thing that had managed to bring him this far. _Sam is dead_. He pressed a kiss to Sam’s temple. _Mom must be in the tower. I need to take Sam to the tower._

“You won’t make it up there on your own.”

Gabriel started. He gaped as a body materialized out of seemingly thin air—his brother Raphael, looking as inelegant as Gabriel had ever seen him. His long hair was disheveled and matted, his usually immaculate clothing torn and ragged. He smiled.

“I suppose I can serve as your deus ex machina, brother.” Raphael extended a hand. “Let me?”

Instead of giving Sam over, Gabriel took his brother’s hand under his lover’s knee and let Raphael haul him to his feet. _Are you okay?_ he mouthed.

Raphael cocked his head in what was, for him, a delicate form of a shrug. “Do I look it? My city has fallen apart, Gabriel.” His gaze dropped to Sam. “Case 215311-58. Samuel Winchester. My greatest failure, thanks to you.”

Gabriel smiled humourlessly.

Raphael’s brow furrowed. “You left. You took Mother with you—do you know what they put me through, with the two of you gone? They held me in Inquisition for a week. I was under threat of decommission. I was working at APkA as a prisoner, under investigation by my own employees. And you did it for what, for this… fragile toy that you managed to break in a month?”

 He didn’t raise his voice, but there was anger seething behind every carefully articulated word. Gabriel shook his head—an apology, a refusal, a gesture that meant absolutely nothing in the face of his brother’s fury. He deserved it all. None of them had spared Raphael a second thought when they left. He looked down at Sam, at his peaceful, empty face. It had all been for nothing, in the end.  

“Not to mention you brought Lucifer— _Lucifer!_ —you brought _him_ back here with you! And you have nothing to say for yourself?” Raphael’s expression fell as he watched Gabriel’s face. “Why… Gabriel, why don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

Gabriel lifted his chin as much as he dared, exposing his wounded neck. Raphael made a sympathetic noise.

“Did Luci do that?” Raphael’s voice was soft. He didn’t wait for an answer. “And is he… if I looked for him, would I find him—?”

Gabriel shook his head again.

After a moment’s pause, Raphael cleared his throat. “I… I wasn’t expecting it, I hadn’t dared to hope… but it’s all right. Bigger fish. If he had been here, I would’ve had to step between the two of you, wouldn’t I?” He sighed. “I suppose that’s my lot. To protect your stupid, soft heart, whatever the consequences.”

Gabriel met his gaze and mouthed, _No. I’m sorry._

Raphael pressed forward and ran a hand through Gabriel’s hair. “I forgive you, Gabriel.” His mouth quirked. “And Mother too. I know it can’t have been her idea to cross the border, at any rate.”  

Gabriel grinned ruefully.  

Raphael stepped back and squared his shoulders, staring at the tower before them. “She’s up there, isn’t she? With… with them.”

Without waiting for an answer, he locked his arms around Gabriel’s middle, under Sam, and Gabriel heard the _whirr-snick_ of Raphael’s wings unfolding.

“Let’s go, then.”

 

———

 

Charlotte tightened her grip on the utility knife she’d found in one of the chairs’ desk drawers. Hannah dropped into a ready position. The elevator light blinked as the car approached their floor again—it had been stop-starting its way down for twelve storeys now, and Charlotte had no doubt that whoever (or whatever) was inside it was looking for her.

The elevator chimed, and with a soft whir and the fading sounds of what seemed to be an electro-swing cover of the omnipresent _The Girl from Ipanema_ , the doors slid open.

“Gabriel, _Raphael_ ,” Charlotte breathed, the tension slipping from her body. “How did you get here? I-is that—”

The two of them stepped out of the elevator. Gabriel’s face was wan. Sam was limp and still in his arms.

Hannah made a soft sound, like an exhale, and reached for the body. “May I?”

Gabriel clung to Sam a little tighter. Then he relaxed, and, with almost no change in his expression, let Hannah take Sam away. Charlotte pulled him and Raphael into a fierce hug—Raphael reciprocated gently, but Gabriel was stiff against her, more unnatural than he’d ever felt before. She only hugged him tighter.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “Gabe, s-sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t say anything. When Charlotte finally pulled back, she saw the fresh stitches on his throat and realized why.

“Oh f-fuck, Gabe, don’t worry, we’ll get you fixed, okay?” She turned her head to Raphael. “W-was he like this when you found him? Shit, Raph, we never should’ve left, fuck—”

 Raphael squeezed her shoulder. “It’s all right, Mother. I understand.”

She laughed wetly. “Well, h-hey, that’s almost all of us back together again. I can’t remember the last time we all…” She swallowed a sob. “Heh. I-I don’t suppose either of you s-saw Lucifer?”

Gabriel wouldn’t look at her. Raphael let out a deep and miserable sigh.

“Lucifer’s gone,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Charlotte’s knees wanted to give, and her gorge rose. She tried to beat it down, to keep clinging to her boys and give them the comfort that they all desperately needed. But somewhere between that first hug and their return to the break room, Charlotte let them go. Suffused as she was in her own grief, she couldn’t remember when exactly she’d lost the feeling in her legs.

They reached the break room to find that Hannah had laid out Sam’s body on the sofa, his filthy shoes making prints on the pristine white. They were arranging his limbs, gently and slowly moving him as if he were sleeping and they were trying not to wake him.

As Gabriel, Raphael, and Charlotte took seats on the unoccupied part of the sectional, Hannah told the archangels what had happened with the Equin chairs. Raphael relayed the details of the fight outside, and the current state of the city. Charlotte nodded along, keeping one hand on each of her boys’ backs. When everyone had finished, Hannah joined their companions on the couch and all four of them sat in solemn, defeated silence.

Fresh grief was thick and brittle all at once. It lodged in Charlotte’s throat—mourning for her dead son and her living ones. And for Sam himself, if she was being truthful. They hadn’t been close, but she had liked him, and he hadn’t deserved this. None of them deserved this.

_But I do_ , she thought.

In the quiet, Charlotte found her voice. “I-in the vision, the chairs said they stole the Grace from the world of the dead.”

Gabriel twitched. Raphael shifted in his seat, turning to her with a frown.

“U-upstairs,” she went on, “th-they left that o-opening behind them, that gate. There was a similar one in the vision.” Charlotte swallowed. “I th-think… I think that if we went through it, we might find the world of the dead.”  

All three of them stared at her—Raphael with his typical pensiveness, Hannah and Gabriel with terrifying excitement. Gabriel stood, begging her with his eyes to lead the way.

“H-hold on!” she said, more shrilly than she would’ve liked. “W-we can’t just g-go, we—” Taking a moment to steady her quavering voice, Charlotte clenched and unclenched her fists in a tense, ritualistic rhythm. “I-if I’m right, that’s the place that almost killed the Equin chairs. We n-need to prepare.”

They took stock of what supplies they had, which proved to be little. Raphael could take care of himself, of course, but Hannah only had low-grade defense mechanisms and the only detached weapon they had to their name was Gabriel’s quarterstaff. With the tower’s militaries either fled or dead, their best bet was looting—and so they first made their way down to the lobby.

The tower, it appeared, had evacuated shortly after the attacks began. The work day was over, after all, and most of the menials pulling overnight shifts were angels who had left to defend the city when the demons flooded the streets. There were a handful of humans and serviles cowering behind desks and in closets, and they simply stared at the Artifex Deus and her angelic entourage as they passed them by.

The doors and windows of the lobby were protected by security gates, but a few bodies littered the floor—unfortunate casualties of the gates’ slow descent, no doubt. Weasels scrabbled and snarled at the glass, and Charlotte shivered in revulsion. She’d watched them from the upstairs windows but had been unprepared for how hideous they were up close.

Thankfully, a few of the dead were demons and militaries. Gabriel and Hannah ripped their blades from their arms—Charlotte tried not to look as they cracked the androids open like lobsters, and tried not to vomit when they handed her a blade.

The elevator trip up, much like the ride down and the looting itself, was dead silent.

At last, they reached the crack. Charlotte could’ve sworn it had gotten bigger since the last time she’d seen it. As they entered the room, all three angels took a stumbling step forward, letting out low, quiet moans that sounded disquietingly like the hum of computer fans.

Raphael glanced between Hannah and his brother. “You feel it too?”

Gabriel nodded, his face twisting. Hannah’s hands trembled.

“It feels… strong,” they said. “It feels like wanting.”

“M-maybe we shouldn’t do this,” Charlotte said, but there was no bite in her voice. Truth be told, she felt it too, now. That sense of immenseness, of pull, a hypnotic thrum of desire and oh, how wonderful would it be to just fall into it—a thrill ran through her and she pulled herself upright, only then realizing that she’d been leaning forward.

She reached the crack first and lifted a hand to it. She couldn’t remember why she had pulled Hannah back before. She dragged her fingertips along the seam, felt that warm-cool impossibility, watched as her skin grew gold and sweetly pink at the touch. It felt like touching Hannah, it felt like losing herself in work—it felt like euphoric and explosive release.

Gabriel reached it next and began to touch it as well. Charlotte turned to him.

“I-I can’t promise he’s in there,” she said quietly. “I don’t kn-know that I’m right.” _I feel it, though,_ she thought, and remembered Hannah’s description of a creature in their breast.

 Gabriel nodded. Charlotte could see in his eyes that he didn’t care; he would’ve jumped into the weasel swarm if someone gave him the slightest inkling that it would bring Sam back.

Hannah and Raphael joined them, each raising a hand in almost instinctive unison to touch opposing points of the branching crack. With Charlotte and Gabriel at the center, the four of them dug their hands into the light and pulled. The seam grew larger. They pulled harder, and the light spread and pooled in their every crooks. The seam grew large enough to step through.

And so they did.

 

———

 

The dark, at first, was blinding.

It wasn’t darkness in the sense of absent light, but in the sense of absence. There was nothing to be lit—no matter, no space, and no bodies to inhabit it. Gabriel felt weightless, he felt like formless data. There was nothing to encompass him because he did not need encompassing. He simply Was, a fact of the universe, code and intent and consciousness flying loose with the various particles that surrounded him.

Then, in an instant, he became.

He was alone and surrounded by arbutus trees. Rather, light in the approximation of arbutus trees—they were practically indistinguishable from the real thing, down to the finest details, but there was a nearly imperceptible lack of mass to them. Their silvery leaves rustled and whispered in the breeze, their rust-coloured trunks peeling in strips of red and bone-white. Beyond them was the sea.

Gabriel had never been here, but it felt familiar in the way he imagined dreams did. Like a memory that wasn’t his.

A figure glided out from between the trees. It was willowy and slender, and wore black, and if it had a face, that face was covered by a red, disc-like mask with a mandala carved into it. Still, it radiated comfort as it came towards him, its robes billowing like soft, black clouds.

“You are not meant to be here,” it said. It wasn’t speaking English—its voice was the sound of the arbutus leaves, rising and sighing in sharp waves.

“Sure I am,” Gabriel said, and was shocked to find that he could speak at all. “World of the dead, right? That’s where I meant to go, so it’s where I’m meant to be.”

“But you are not mortal.”

“Nope. I’m looking for one. They would’ve just arrived—brand-new ghost, any brand-new ghosts?”

The figure tilted its head. “No one new has come here. This is a very old place, full of very old souls.”

Gabriel set his jaw. “Can you help me find them, then?”

The figure laughed. “Do you think I know where everything is? No Guardian knows the extent of the Loci, or the souls that dwell within them. We simply watch over our own, and watch that the light of its Qin is not extinguished.”

“Okay, you just said a bunch of stuff I didn’t understand.”

“That is because you are not meant to be here.” The figure—the Guardian—straightened as if in triumph. “But immortals may roam the Loci for a time, if they abide by our rules.”

The Guardian brought one formless sleeve to the brim of its mask, and tilted the red disc back. Beneath was a void, and in that void a pinprick of light. Gabriel stared at that pinprick as if hypnotized, watching it grow bigger and wider until it encompassed him, and suddenly he was falling into it—

He was in a desert teeming with life. The ground was rich with snakes and lizards and hares. A herd of horses were galloping by in the near distance, some with riders and some without. The riders themselves were dressed to the nines in Victorian chic.

Another Guardian stood beside him, this one with a green mask with an abstract, Picasso-like design upon it.

“Whom do you seek?” the Guardian asked. Its voice was dust and the shrieking drone of cicadas.

“Samuel Winchester. Ah, junior, I guess,” Gabriel said. He didn’t see much point in lying to these things. If what Charlotte and Hannah had told him was correct, they’d nearly destroyed one of the Equin chairs. “He’s new.”

The Guardian sighed like whistling wind through a canyon. “Not here. You have never been to this realm before, have you?”

“Is it that obvious? I’m the blushing new bride of the world of the dead.”

To his surprise, the Guardian made a sound like laughter. “You must call to the soul you wish to visit, let it guide you through our labyrinth. Else you will never find them, and the Qin will reshape you into a Loci.”

Gabriel started. “It’ll _what_?”

“Have you never been immortal before, either?”

Gabriel snorted. “The Grim Reaper has a sense of humour, who knew?”

“If you seek this Samuel Winchester, Jr,” the Guardian said, tilting its mask back, “you must call.”

And Gabriel was falling again, tumbling into darkness.

He tried to call. At first he literally called out to Sam in the space between the Loci, but all that availed was the mocking laughter of the next Guardian. Then he tried doing it within himself, simply thinking Sam’s name as loudly as he could. He passed through galaxies where gigantic humanoids sucked planets from their thumbs, through dark tunnels full of warmth and furry beasts, through dreamscapes of greenyellow skies over rolling steppes covered in blue grass.

One Guardian told him he had to reach for Sam with his mind, another that he had to feel for his spark, and Gabriel wanted to scream, to demand a clearer answer. _I’m a machine_ , he thought. _I don’t have the heart for this_. But he kept diving into Loci after Loci, hoping for a glimpse of Sam, of his mother, of Hannah, of his brother.

After thirty-seven little worlds, Gabriel began to grow disheartened. Then he tumbled into something new.

The Loci was a wasteland—not a desert, but a desolate nothing, devoid of life and colour. The ground was dried out grey clay, and the sky was empty and black. The wind shrilled, a cacophony of pitched-up screams and agonized sobs. Instead of a Guardian, there was a lonesome mask lying in the muck. It was a sickly whitish yellow, and the pattern was disrupted by chips and cracks.

Several meters away from him stood four figures in coloured robes, their faces almost entirely obscured by gauze, their teeth bared and sharp.      

Gabriel took a step towards them. Then there was a rumbling beneath his feet and from the earth erupted Raphael—then Charlotte—then Hannah. They glanced around, Charlotte breathing heavily. Their gazes settled on Gabriel, then the four figures, and Hannah and Charlotte shivered as one.

“Th-that’s them,” Charlotte whispered. “The chairs.”

“So kind of you to be discreet.” The being in the red robe led the group as they came closer, its long, thin arms outstretched as if in greeting. “Welcome, Artifex. I trust the trip was not too strenuous.”

“Wh-what is this place?” Charlotte bit out. Gabriel couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride at the strength with which she held herself, even if her fists were trembling.

“This?” Purple laughed. “This is the origin of your Grace. Zikam plucked it from this very Loci and slew its Guardian.”

Yellow sneered. “Yes, yes, we’re very proud. And now we’re stuck. This realm is a chain of small worlds, and with this link deadened, the rest is inaccessible. We can’t get out—none of us can, not even these poor souls.” It waved its hand, and Gabriel saw for the first time that there were shapes in the wind—amorphous faces frozen in agony, the occasional flash of a grasping hand, wing, paw, and limbs he couldn’t name.

“I imagine they’ve all ended up here,” said Green. “Every mortal being in this corner of the universe that has died since we stole the Qinstone. Or at least most.”

Gabriel twitched. _Sam_.

Purple grinned. “Thinking about your little mortal friend, Archangel? We watched enough to see that he was bound to Lucifer, and if you’re here… Oh, that can’t have been a fun death, could it? And not a very fun afterlife, either.”

It took everything Gabriel had not to fling himself at the creature. A quick look in his peripheral showed him that Charlotte felt the same—her knuckles were white with tension and her cheeks were flushed. No doubt everyone she’d lost since acquiring the Grace was passing through her mind, just as they were through his. Everyone who died in the Fall. Everyone who’d been caught on the other side of the border, pounding on the burning wall and begging to be let inside. Every human he’d met while undercover, every human he’d turned in to the Inquisitors. All here, somewhere in the screaming gale.

“Did you know?” he spat.

Red shrugged. “We suspected.”

“How could it not matter to you, then?” Hannah stepped forward, and they looked so small and delicate next to the hulking forms of the chairs, even more so than the rest of them did. Designed as they were to be attractive and non-threatening, their body looked like it was made of china. “How could you do it,” they went on, “knowing the fate to which you were condemning thousands?”

“Thousands of _mortals_ ,” Yellow said, gently, as if to a child. “They are temporary things. But you are young—you’ve yet to understand their incredible inconsequence. The most accomplished mortal creature can barely scratch the surface of experience.”

“But the three of you…” Green nodded at Hannah, at Gabriel, and at Raphael in turn. “Oh, the three of you have such lives to live. Without the power of the Qin, Ms. Shurley here is a speck in the vastness of your potential existence.”

“She’s our mother,” Raphael said.

Purple’s grin curled nastily. “And she brought you here to die.”

They stood there silent a moment, listening to the howls of the dead. Gabriel tried to find Sam’s voice in the cacophony, but even his advanced ear couldn’t pick out the threads.

Hannah said, “This place requires a source of Gr—of Qin to become itself again, yes?”

“Indeed it does,” answered Red. “But where will you go, then? Will you dive deeper down the chain until you lose yourself again? Will you pass into an entirely new realm? There is nowhere else for you to go. Without the anchoring Qinstone, your world will be overtaken by the black. Your air will become rotten and unbreathable, and any who survive will limp blindly across the husk of the Earth until it eats itself.”

Charlotte looked seconds from falling to her knees. Raphael stood deathly still. Gabriel watched the faces twisting in the wind and felt empty. He thought of the survivors of New River, hiding in the rubble of their half-destroyed city, Graceless and abandoned by any semblance of higher powers. He thought of Sam’s study of pre-Fall myth—of all the stories out there depicting post-apocalyptic wastelands with glimmers of hope hiding within themselves. Dry land, holy books, the last reservoirs of clean water. Not enough to fix the world completely, but enough to help it go on.

Real life, it seemed, was both infinitely weirder and unfathomably bleaker.

WARNING: POWER LOW

_Well, isn’t that just the icing on the shit cake?_ Gabriel couldn’t even muster proper horror as he ran an internal scan.

< _System currently running on_ _RESERVE_ _power. Shutdown in_ _ONE_ _hour. Please ingest biomass as soon as possible. >_

So much for the glory of immortality. At least he wouldn’t have to spend eternity in deadworld hell with a smug quad of eldritch bureaucrats. What, he wondered, happened to angels when they died? He tightened his grip on the quarterstaff.

And then he froze.

“Does it have to be big?”

Red turned to him, and Gabriel swore that even with most of its face covered the damn thing managed to look indolent. “Does _what_ have to be big, Archangel?”

“The Grace source,” Gabriel said. “We had a pretty massive one back home, but what if we just had a little piece? Itty bitty.”

Red stilled. “You mean whatever is keeping that staff of yours charged?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Perhaps… perhaps if it were amplified by another force.”

Gabriel nodded. He felt a grip on his arm, and turned to see Charlotte at his side.

“What are you thinking?” she whispered.

“No fucking clue,” he lied. To the robed figures, he said, “I have to imagine you heard that. But here’s a theory—what if I shot the mask? These blasts are concentrated surges of Grace energy, aren’t they? Worst case scenario, I break an already broken thing. I say it’s worth a shot, don’t you? Pun intended.”

Purple hissed through its teeth. “Zikam, the Guardian will not suffer us to be here. We’ll have to act fast.”

“And we will, Bakhe,” said Red. “ _If_ it works.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Gabriel winked, and couldn’t help the thrill that passed through him as the four figures growled their irritation.

He turned to the white mask sitting cracked on the ground and aimed at it. _Two shots left_.

Gabriel whirled around and fired at Red.

It recoiled with an ear-splitting scream. The other figures dove to catch it, wailing as if Gabriel had fired on all of them. In the instant before he turned his back on the scene, Gabriel saw that Red’s right arm was hanging by a sinew and leaking something thick and muddy.

Then he shot at the mask, and the plane exploded in a rush of blue-white light.

 

———

 

When Charlotte came to, the Loci was bright with flowers. She sat up, dazed, and saw Raphael and Hannah beside her, similarly winded but struggling upright. A foot or so away, the tattered remains of red, purple, yellow, and green robes lay mudstained in the grass.

Relief gave way to momentary panic as she realized she couldn’t see Gabriel—then she turned around and saw him being held upright by the softly rippling sleeves of a Guardian, the quarterstaff fallen at his feet. The Guardian’s white mask was resplendent, whole, and gleaming, and Gabriel was staring up at it with beatific wonder.

“Thank you,” it said, its voice a cascade of trilling birdsong. “The souls of this Loci will be redistributed, and the pathway will be whole again, all because of you.”

“My pleasure,” Gabriel said. “But, ah, before you shuffle the ghosts—do you have a Samuel Winchester?”

The Guardian lifted its head. “Yes… yes, the one you seek is here.”

“Great.” Gabriel stepped out of the Guardian’s sleeves and straightened himself. “Then I have two requests.”

Charlotte frowned. She got to her feet beside Hannah and Raphael, and instinctively grabbed for Hannah’s hand. The angel squeezed.

“Requests?” The Guardian sounded decidedly unsurprised. “Very well, I will hear them.”

“First,” Gabriel said, “you give Samuel Winchester a second chance.”

“A second chance…?”

“Yeah, at life. Isn’t that what you call it? I don’t care, just… he gets to live, okay? He lives.”

The Guardian nodded but didn’t say anything. When it continued to be silent, Gabriel drew a breath and went on.

“Also, I… I need to know if there’s any way to save our world.”

Charlotte could’ve wept. Instead she waited, her grip on Hannah’s hand tightening. If there was a way out, if there was a fix, if they could _do_ something…

The Guardian let out a sound like a breath. “You come from Earth—from the planet overrun with rotten Qin. Those four never should have meddled; they saw only the Qin’s power, not the terrible balance of destruction and creation it maintains.”

“You’re right,” Gabriel said, “but it’s done now. Can it be undone?”

“No. But it can be checked. Countered, by a force of Qin dedicated to keeping the rot at bay. You had that, once—and of course I cannot give you back what those creatures stole, but I can offer you an… alternative solution. And I can help you carry it out, as thanks for the salvation you have offered me—but know that this solution does not come without its own price.”

The Guardian leaned forward and appeared to whisper something in Gabriel’s ear. Gabriel’s jaw jumped. Charlotte felt the pit of her stomach sink.

“Sam lives?” Gabriel asked.

The Guardian nodded again. “Yes.”

Gabriel squared his shoulders. “Then I’ll do it.”

“Like _hell_ you fucking will!”

Charlotte surged towards Gabriel, bodily forcing herself between him and the Guardian. She stared up at her son, feeling a fire in her breast with which she was growing more and more familiar as the night wore on. “Gabe, I’m n-not letting you do this.”

“Mom, you don’t even know what they’re asking.”

“I-I didn’t know what they were asking a hundred years ago, either!” She took his face in her hands, ran a thumb across his cheek. _Perfect, mine, my baby_. “Whatever it i-is, it’s too much. Please, Gabe, the world’s not worth it. I a-already broke it, and I’ve… I don’t care that it was m-me, I don’t _care_ that I deserve to lose everything over what I did, I-I’m not letting this cosmic bullshit take anything else from me!”

 Gabriel covered her hands with his and gently, gently, lowered them. He looked at her with eyes that betrayed the weight of his existence, the weight of what he’d done with it—what she’d let Equin make him do. She wanted to buckle, she wanted to scream, she wanted to grab him by the ear and drag him to their dying home herself, but what he said stopped her from doing anything more than stepping aside, glowing with love, sorrow, and pride in equal measure.

“You’re wrong, Mom. You don’t deserve to lose anything.”

The Guardian reached for him, and the Loci faded. The next thing Charlotte knew, she was standing back in the tower with Raphael and Hannah, and the door to the world of the dead was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The penultimate chapter has arrived, and with it the culmination of a lot of worldbuilding and a LOT of daydreaming :P I've been through like three different versions of this chapter in my head, and I'm really happy with what I settled on! I hope you are too!


	23. Deus Ex Machina

Sam was sitting upright when they reached the break room. He ran his hands over his body, staring into space with numb incredulity. When he saw them enter, he blinked at them and said, “I was a bee.”

“I beg your pardon?” Raphael asked.

“In… in there. Everything was cold, and everything _hurt_ , and then for a couple minutes… I was a bee.” He glanced between the three of them. “Where’s Gabriel?”

Charlotte couldn’t speak. She was afraid to, thought that if she opened her mouth the bile she could feel churning in her stomach would spill out. She had been willing to let Gabriel do what he felt he needed to do, but—

“Gabriel,” Sam repeated. Fear sparked in his eyes. “Where is he? He was with me before, and I could’ve sworn I heard him in that… in that other place.” Sam looked briefly lost and very, very young. “I thought I heard him calling me.”

Hannah went to Sam’s side. They had the same expression on their face that they had worn the first time they’d visited Charlotte’s penthouse— _you talk, I’ll listen_. “Gabriel stayed behind,” they said. “He bargained for your life, Sam, and he won.”

“He bargained for a-all of our lives,” Charlotte said. “A-And we don’t know that he won yet. T-trust me, those things lie.”

“The chairs lied, Mother.” Raphael’s voice was too gentle, and not what she needed. “Maybe the Guardian didn’t.”

“ _Maybe_ being th-the operative word.”

Sam shook his head. “He’s gone, then. You just _let_ him—” He appeared to catch himself, then met Charlotte’s gaze, frowning. “You said all of our lives? What do you mean?”

Hannah was looking at Charlotte too, now. She could feel Raphael’s eyes boring into the back of her skull, and she sighed. “I-I guess we have to go see.”

 

 

Above the penthouse was a rooftop garden that Charlotte had stopped visiting long ago. It was a maze of trellises grown over with different types of ivy and climbing flowers, peppered with ridiculously comfortable patio furniture. When the four of them made it up there, Charlotte was shocked to find it still in perfect condition, untouched and unbothered by the chaos that had unfolded around it. The sun was coming up, and the sky arched with streaks of blues, pinks, and golds in the east, while the rest was still dark and dotted with stars.

The rift was gone, and from what they could see, so were the monsters.

Below, people were starting to file into the streets. They couldn’t make out much detail—well, the angels probably could—but they could hear the tentative cheers that began to ring out. The city was in shambles, but it appeared to be safe.

“H-how do we know about the Jax?” Charlotte murmured. “How d-do we know they got rid of the Jax?”

“I think they did,” Sam said. He had wrapped his arms around himself and was smiling softly, disbelievingly. “I don’t… I don’t feel it anymore.”

“Then Gabriel did it.” Hannah slid an arm around Charlotte’s waist.

“Yeah,” Charlotte laughed bitterly. “He actually s-saved the world.”

“And I’m an only child,” Raphael said. When the others turned to stare at him, he shrugged. “What? It’s true. I’m not happy about it.”

“You’re a fucking liar, Raph.”

All four of them whipped around in unison. Gabriel stood beneath a trellis covered in blooming morning glory, smiling wryly like he hadn’t just been left behind in the afterlife. He was glowing faintly, a sweet, golden light that suffused his skin and crowned him like an actual halo.

“ _Gabriel_ ,” Sam breathed.

“Hey, Sam,” Gabriel said, voice soft. He held out his arms and Sam fell into them, peppering Gabriel’s face with kisses.

“They told me they’d left you, I thought you were gone—”

“You didn’t think I’d just take off like that, did you?” Gabriel curled a hand under Sam’s chin, brushing his lower lip with his thumb.

“What… what happened to you?”

“Well, it’s, uh, hard to explain.” Gabriel was addressing all of them now, though he remained entwined with the giant of a young man to whom he’d attached himself. “What little Grace was left in me, the Guardian sort of… amplified it. And linked it, through me, to the entire world. Like what you did, Mom, but for _everything_. I can feel it all, every bit of life on the whole damn marble. I think I might actually be God now.” He shrugged. “At least I can still manifest a physical form, huh? I thought for sure I’d lose that.”

Charlotte felt about as dumbfounded as the rest of them looked—which is to say, incredibly. She shook her head. “Th-that… how is that even _possible_? It c-can’t be, what am I saying? It’s definitely not possible.”

“And yet, _c’est moi_.” Gabriel grinned and gave Sam a kiss, this one on the mouth. “God is a gay robot, it’s official.”

He waved Charlotte and the others closer, and in a moment, they had all surrounded him in a tight group hug. Charlotte felt all of them, the warmth and the press of their bodies—she felt Hannah, and the love she had for them. She felt Sam, and knew she would come to love him too. Charlotte felt her sons there in her arms, and the grief and misery she’d been feeling for over a century was replaced by a tentative, giddy joy.

When they had disentangled themselves, Gabriel asked her: “So. You played a god to a whole host of angels, and now you’re God’s mom. Which do you like better?”

Charlotte laughed. “This. Definitely this.”

 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... that's it. 
> 
> I honestly can't believe I finally finished this thing. 3.5 years later, and it's actually fucking DONE.
> 
> Thank you so much for everyone who's kept up with my awful update schedule, dropping the story, picking the story up again, and all that crap. You guys mean the world to me and you're 99% of the reason why this monster ever got finished <3


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